In January

This month’s bleak pleasures and our first Book Club of the year

Wintering was included in People Magazine’s Best Books of the 2020s!• Hear me on Life Examined (I love this show; I’ve asked to be their official Winter Correspondent) • I’m a little late to share this, but I wrote about grief and Christmas for Oprah Daily • My Way Through Winter course is perfect for your New Year ruminations

Scroll down for details of this month’s True Stories Book Club

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January is a convalescent month. After the dark drama of midwinter - the death and rebirth of the year - the sun begins its journey towards its summer heights. But it is enfeebled, weak still from its ordeal. Slowly, steadily, almost imperceptibly, the days lengthen, minute by gloomy minute.

These are the days of aftermath. I’m always glad to take down the Christmas decorations, which have usually begun to tatter by this point. I’m grateful to be past the chaos of the festive season, the overturning of my house’s order as furniture is moved to accommodate the tree, the bulging fridge full of ingredients for the next feast and leftovers of the last. But this year, we bought the tree late. My dog had an operation at the beginning of December, and was in a cone for three weeks. I couldn’t face the idea of her continually crashing into it, blinkered as she was. So the tree still feels new to me, a welcome source of colour and bright light in the corner of the living room. I’d usually have burned it on New Year’s Eve, but I wasn’t yet ready to let go of it. The tree has a reprieve, for a few days at least.

Life in January is cold and hard, but it can contain great beauty, too (Image: Shutterstock)

It won’t last long though. I look forward to the sparseness of the January house; it is my only act of New Year puritanism. I do not hold with the various January diets we’re supposed to undertake, the commitments to becoming a reformed character. We used to fast before our major feasts, breaking our penitence in joyous abandon. Now we fast after the event, and it’s not a spiritual practice but an act of atonement for daring to enjoy ourselves. It feels a lot like self-loathing to me, and I won’t be a part of it. Life in January is already hard enough.

So I’ll be keeping the string lights even after the tree has gone, and getting outside to catch what little sunlight is available. I’ll be making the most of those blue sky winter days, and rejoicing in the ice and frost. I’ll be leaning enthusiastically into soup as a lifestyle, and making the most of the peak-season citrus fruits and dark green brassicas.

Meanwhile, I’ll be exercising discipline when it comes to news media, focusing on offering practical help, rather than succumbing to abstract worry, and remembering to light candles in the afternoons. This year is going to be a beast. January is a primer in how to survive it.

What I’m loving this month:

• Nigel Slater’s A Thousand Feasts

• My new Batoko swimming costume - it has narwhals!

• Orange squash

• This beautiful tarot deck and Caroline Donahue’s Story Arcana course

• The New York Times crossword, inspired by this documentary

• Only Connect, Season 17

• The Shipping Forecast centenary

• Method Daily Zen shower gel

• The massage cushion I self-gifted after a looooong Christmas.

January’s Book Club pick

As I wrote in December, we’re changing things up a little for the True Stories Book Club, focusing on classics rather than new releases.

This month’s Book Club pick is A Woman in the Polar Night by Austrian artist Christiane Ritter. Written in 1934, it describes the year in which Ritter lived on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen with her husband, with only miles of icy tundra for company. Rather than being a tale of grim survival, this memoir is a lucid, visionary and at times ecstatic account of a woman finding herself at the edge of the world.

I’ll be checking in each week as we read along, and paid subscribers can join us live for an event with special guest

Anna Brones

on Tuesday 28th January (joining details are below the paywall).

Here’s the schedule we’ll be following - I hope you’ll read along!

January 6th - 12th: Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4

January 13th - 19th: Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8

January 20th - 26th: Chapters 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13

January 27th - 31st: Chapters 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18

A Woman in the Polar Night is published by Puskin Press in the UK and the US. There’s also an audiobook.

Looking forward to reading with you!

Take care,

Katherine