For the past two years, I’ve written about my reluctance to make resolutions: new year, new you (2024) and resolutions (2023). This year, I decided to focus on books instead.

During the fuzzy days between Christmas and New Year’s, I read two books about winter: Christiane Ritter’s A Woman in the Polar Night and Katherine May’s Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Both offered me perspectives that I seemed to need.

The first documents an intense experience in the Arctic winter of 1933-1934: Ritter joins her husband for his annual hunt on Spitsbergen, now Svalbard. I wondered how I hadn’t heard of the book before now. Its focus on one season (the Polar winter) reminded me of Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Winter in Taos, which I read for my dissertation–30 years ago?!–and would love to reread. Perhaps next winter break, when I’ll be on a permanent break from school and work.

The second ruminates on the concept of wintering: resting and retreating in order to rejuvenate for the spring, summer, fall. I purchased then gave the book to a friend in the midst of the pandemic; I found it again through a quote shared by a colleague on Instagram. In my Kindle edition, I highlighted a quote from the “Cold Water” chapter. After battling a chronic illness, a friend of May’s shares her doctor’s advice: ‘”This isn’t about getting you fixed,” he said. “This is about you living the best life you can with the parameters you have.”‘ I found this a helpful view on my own struggles with IBS. But every chapter, every event felt relatable. I could highlight so many sections! The book may become a seasonal reread. Meanwhile, I’ve added May’s Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age to my “to read” pile.

Before Christmas, I finished the bizarre yet captivating The Mourner’s Bestiary, by Eiren Caffall. I wasn’t sure about the book at first, but as she moved back and forth between the Long Island Sound and the Gulf of Maine and traverses key moments in her life, I became fascinated with Caffall’s unique combination of environmentalism and memoir. She weaves together her family’s medical history–many relatives dying of a genetic and typically fatal disease–and the natural history of the marine environment–its precarity in the face of climate change and human impact. I like the narrative structure, if not all of the analogies, and have sent a copy to Jen, whose father Chuck Smith died on December 23. Something about Caffall’s experiences with grief, illness, and the wild reminded me of Jen. I hope she doesn’t find the book too weird.

I know I said no resolutions; however, I ordered two swimming suits from Land’s End as a Christmas gift to myself. I resolve to swim again. I’m hopeful that retirement will give me the space and time to reclaim my body. Cheers to the new year!