The Tenth Day of Blogmas - Six For Sunday

Hi! It's Sunday again, which means that I don't have to try to come up with some brilliant, original idea for my blog today, and instead I can just ride on the coat tails of Steph at alittlebutalot and have a go at this week's #SixForSunday books.

This week the theme is Favourite books about Winter.

I'm going to try to avoid specifically Christmas books here, because I've read ahead and that's coming up on Christmas Eve.

1. The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. It's not a Christmas book, it's a Hogswatch Night book. I love this because it really feels like Terry is exploring some of the gritty, pagan roots of our Christmas traditions, but doing so with humour and affection. 

2. The Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. This feels a lot closer to a classical fairy story than The Hogfather. Tiffany Aching is one of the great female characters in fantasy literature, and here she faces off against the personification of winter, who decides he quite likes her. It's YA, but that shouldn't put you off.

3. The Shining by Stephen King. There's something claustrophobic about winter at times, the idea of getting trapped somewhere by the snow. This is possibly one of the scariest examples of that.

4. At The Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft. I can't remember whether this one is set at winter or not, but it is set in Antarctica where it's basically always winter, so I'm counting it. One of my favourite Lovecraft short stories, an Antarctic expedition finds something strange and ancient in the mountains. It is genuinely creepy.

5. The Scarecrow Queen by Melinda Salisbury. It's a subtle thing, but the winter setting gives this fantastic dark fantasy novel a sharp edge. The coldness of the castle adds a wonderfully bleak aspect to Errin's imprisonment.

6. Winds of Winter by George R R Martin. The most anticipated fantasy novel of the last three and the next two or three years, the sixth Game of Thrones novel. Now if only George would stop getting distracted!