Today, it is officially winter. Horrifyingly, it was 8 degrees when I awoke this morning. It took nearly an hour for the heat to begin working in my car and I am seemingly cemented in tights. I hate tights, but this time of year, pants make me feel wide and leggings are really not appropriate for work. I live in sack dresses with empire waists. Alas, I digress…

I felt the need to post today because I’ve been thinking a lot about reading and needed to document what I want to read. Cold weather always makes me think of fires and cuddling up in some home that is not my own (because I do not have a fireplace) hunkering down and getting lost in a story. Hopefully we’ll be starting a book club soon…and most of these recommended reads are courtesy of NPR (actually all).

• Mrs. Bridge
• Spooner by Pete Dexter
• When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler’s Journal of Staying Put, by Vivian Swift
• Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile, by Sara Wheeler
• The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders, by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre
• The Color of Lightning, by Paulette Jiles
• The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway
• What Happened to Anna K, by Irina Reyn ( This is a re-make of sorts of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, one of my faves)

More from NPR…

Mystery books http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111743357

Carry-On books http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91364064