Top Ten Cozy Reads

Today's Tuesday Top Ten subject is Cozy Reads (Share books that give off a cozy vibe, whether through atmosphere, setting, or some other factor. Please tell us why they’re cozy for you, too!)  I won't make it to ten today, settling for five books that I found to be especially cozy reads.

1. The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking. One of the coziest books I've ever read, all about living in the world's coziest country, Denmark. If your idea of a cozy is a candlelit room, a warm hearth, a cup of hot cocoa, pastries, and a good book... That's Hygge for you. And that's apparently what makes Denmark the happiest country in the world.

2. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. The story takes place on "the edge of the Russian wilderness" and while a snow storm in the Russian forest sounds super chilly, the idea of kids sitting round the fireplace getting told folktales by their nurse while the snow falls outside is super warm. Also as luck would have it, I read this book on a snowy day, in my rocking chair, under a blanket, listening to the blades of snowplows scraping the roads and that memory adds to the over all atmosphere of the book. I was cozy on a winter day, reading about a story in a remote wintery place.

3. Hoofprints by Jessie Haas. Not a novel, instead a book of poem inspired by the love of horses. If people were asked to write their own definition for the word 'home' I imagine we'd all give very different answers. No passion outweighs my love of books, more than my love for horses. I love the smell more than new book smell; burying my face into that soft neck and inhaling hay, pine shavings, sweat and earth. I love that no matter how bad a day I've had, a glance from those big brown eyes, just sucks the negativity from the depths of my soul where it has tried to burrow. Cliche I know, but there is no place cozier, no place homier, than the place where my horse lives.

4. What-the-Dickens by Gregory Maguire. This YA novel, is no rewrite, one of the most original things Gregory Maguire has written. I feel like the first opening scene is what sets its coziness; like The Bear and the Nightingale, the setting sells the story: a dark and stormy night but inside the house the kids are safe and sound, listening to a story... About a toothfairy who's finding his way.

5. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivy. There's nothing cozy about the setting or the characters at first glance; childless homesteaders trying to survive the brutal Alaskan winter, hiding from their despair at the child they didn't have, burying themselves in their love for each other...until a child blows in with the snowstorm. I think the thing that makes it cozy, isn't the place, but the wide range of human emotion as characters who have lost too much strive to gain something new.

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, 

What's your favorite cozy read? Did you pick up anything new from CyberMonday?