Are you looking for books to read in winter? Here are some good reasons why you could pick Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson.
Because it is wintertime and you would like to celebrate winter. If you are snowed in, the ambience will augment your reading experience. If you are not, but you are missing a real snowy winter, the book can help you evoke the experience.
Of course, the book is not just about winter – it’s much deeper and wider than that.
First, it is about the human soul – about the perceptions, thoughts and feelings that come and go or come to stay, how we get obsessed with them and how we get released from them. It’s about how we face what life throws at us. It’s about adaptation and growth, about rites of passage.
Second, it is about different personality types. Tove Jansson is so good at depicting personalities that your reading experience will be full of aha moments – moments of recognition that make you think of the people you know and recognize them inside Tove’s characters.
Third, it does not reduce the complexity of the soul in order to fit her characters into a formula or intentionally teach a lesson. Tove creates real literature, not propaganda. If you have experience with good folk tales, you have probably noticed that even they, in their seeming naivete, leave you intrigued and uncomplacent.
Fourth, it makes a good family read, so you can read it with your children. If you introduce them to quality literature at a younger age, they will not be satisfied with simplistic bestsellers when they grow up, and every time you reread the book, they will be seeing it with new eyes, making more and more out of it.
If you have never come upon Tove’s novels about the Moomins, you can start with this one and if you like it, then you can read and reread the others during the seasons in which they are set.
Wishing you an adventurous and cosy winter!