Some books are tied to the time of the year or the time in my life when I read them. In winter, I often want to read something Victorian, like a good Bronte novel or a Sherlock Holmes story. It's dark out, and it's cold, and at some point, someone will be told to sit closer to the fire. Ghost stories are for fall, of course. And for me, there are certain authors or titles that I want in spring.
Here are four titles:
Greene, Graham- The Wind in the Willows
This book begins with Mole spring-cleaning his home and getting really fed up with it. He runs out of his hole and into the springtime, immediately makes a new best friend, and they have a picnic by the river. And alot of the action after that happens in other seasons, but the beginning of the book is so spring-like that I associate the book with this season.
von Arnim, Elizabeth- Enchanted April
This one's pretty obvious. It's in April! There's flowers and warm weather and rebirth, or a kind.
Burnett, Frances Hodgson- The Secret Garden
Also pretty obvious. Mary finds the secret garden and brings it back to life in springtime, and it always makes me wish I was a gardener. In real life, I have decided that if I kill my current begonia, I am putting a lifetime ban on myself from ever buying one again. I've moved it outside in the hopes that it mostly needs more light and might recover.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls- Little Town on the Prairie
I always think of this book in spring because it also opens in the spring, with a description of the farm on the prairie coming to life, the young livestock, and the relief they felt after the events of The Long Winter, the previous book.
I also always try to read some poetry in April, for National Poetry Month. This year, I've been reading The Human Chain by Seamus Heaney, and I listened to Poetry & the Creative Mind put on by The Academy of American Poets, and I just loved it. I haven't finished The Human Chain yet, but I will soon, and I don't mind taking poetry month into May.
I like to read something about and something by Shakespeare in April, to commemorate his birth. This year, I tried Sweet Sorrow and Hamnet. Sweet Sorrow (David Nicholls) is a coming-of-age story about a young man who falls for a girl in a Shakespeare youth company that is putting on Romeo and Juliet. I just can't get into it. I don't dislike it, but I read about four chapters before it began to get to the company. I think it's mostly a relationship book, so I'm probably going to DNF. I was more looking forward to Hamnet, which I'd received as an ARC at a library conference but then put off reading in 2020 because there's some plague in the book. I also just can't get into it. I don't know why, but alot of the beginning of the book is about Hamnet's mother, and while there isn't alot known about her, the character created for the book just seems wrong to me. I'll admit that I could be way off, and since there isn't much known, I do think that alot of creative license should be allowed here. I'm just not getting into it. Maybe it's me.
I'm just going to finish reading The Merry Wives of Windsor for this year.
If you have any springtime books (or stories, poems, etc), please let me know in the comments.
Some links are affiliate links to bookshop.org. If you haven't shopped there, you should check them out. They support independent bookstores.