I do not read the same way in January as I do in June. I used to think this was just restlessness — a reader’s version of seasonal affective disorder. Now I think it is one of the most honest things about me.
Books have weather. Some are winter books — interior, slow, demanding a kind of stillness that only the short days make available. Others are written in summer light, reckless and expansive, meant to be read in long uninterrupted stretches. And the transitional seasons — that particular melancholy of October, the restless anticipation of March — call for books that understand threshold moments, the feeling of standing between one thing and another.
This is where I track all of that: the reading lists I build around seasons rather than genres, the Literary Mood Boards that translate a season’s atmosphere into books, images, and the particular sensory world I am living in that month. It is a practice, not a programme. And like all practices, it is more interesting in the living than in the description — so the best thing I can say is: come in, look around, and see if your reading self recognizes something here.
In Defense of Good Manners: Why Etiquette is the Secret to Modern Freedom
Fiction as Self-Care: 3 Comforting Books for a Relaxing Winter
January Literary Mood Board: Slow Reading & Bookish Self-Care
Welcome to My Festive Collection
It’s a Woman’s Paris: November Literary Mood Board
October Literary Mood Board: French Classic Books & Autumn Reading
September Literary Mood Board: Autumn Books & French Rentrée Littéraire
