Somehow,
in both my memory and in my semi-conscious thought, I feel the winter
nights are long, really long. This is a mix of reality, imagination
and that for many-many years, I have slept late and worked nights.
To me, my life has been mostly night and for some reason, come
January, my life has always seemed like wintertime.
None
of this is true when I think about things logically. And since I am
an idealist at the core of my being, and an optimist, I believe that
there is only one long winter night. I believe and I have always
believed that should we be able to make it to the winter solstice,
that winter slowly fades because those nights get shorter and
shorter. Whatever it takes to get through the short days of winter,
right? I have been playing these games for years.
Truth
be told, I like the winter. I prefer it. Despite being an idealist,
or the optimist I claim to be, I am not so secretly an introverted
misanthrope. I prefer working nights because there are less people
out. I prefer the winter for the same reason. Spring, summer and
autumn are just too crowded.
The
ever shrinking winter nights? The ever lengthening winter days?
These are still good times for a book. In fact, I believe that most
people, on a cold winter's night, would prefer a seat by the fire
with hot cocoa in one hand and a book in the other. I'm no
different. Jeffery Eugenides in the book Virgin Suicides
says that winter is the time for alcoholism and depression. And I'm
suggest cocoa and literature.
This
season, I'm bravely facing all the works of literature I was just too
scared to read before. How about this: science fiction, weird
fiction, Edwardian novels, romantic poetry? Pretty kinky
combination. Here it is:
The Moon and
Six Pence W. Somerset Maugham
The Good
Soldier Ford Madox Ford
The Call of
Cthulhu H.P. Lovecraft
Minority Report
(and other short stories) Philip K. Dick
The Prince's
Progress (and other poems)
Christina Rossetti
Grimm's
Fairy Tales
The Flowers of
Evil Charles Baudelaire
Paradise Lost
John Milton
The Celestial
Ominbus E.M. Forrester
A General
Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud
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