It’s been so hot, brain denaturing hot, and I don’t have A/C, so all I can do is lie here on my futon and let my hurricane fan blow down on me. It’s too hot to read anything that invokes heat, which means no romances for me for awhile (I’m finishing up The Long Tail instead). Maybe I’ll pick up Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, which a friend once told me “just makes you feel cold” as you read about Quoyle’s life in Killick-Claw.
What books affect your temperature—whether invoking the heat or a chill—when you read them? Does this affect when you read them?
14 comments:
Swimming to Antarctica, by Lynne Cox. Read about all her open-water, cold (read ice) water swims. Perfect summer book.
Into Thin Air. Reading about all that nice frozen Everest...mmmmmmm
No AC here either. bleah
I was reading The Weather Makers until the temps hit 100 this week. After that, it seemed a bit too real ...
To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee's images of a hot and humid Southern summer have always stayed with me.
"Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum powder."
It's not a book but the British kids' short movie "the snowman" will cool you down. I love that thing.
Of course chances are good you don't have it on tape like we do.
The only books that have ever chilled me are books by Stephen King. I'll never forget reading Salem's Lot with a butcher knife beside my bed. As if THAT would stop a vampire. LOL
I hate cold.
Tend to avoid blizzard books at all times, except for Alastair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra.
Moby Dick. Melville wrote about weather in a visceral way -- whether describing chilly New England, where a bowl of chowder seems like heaven, or the balmy tropics.
Some books just don't feel right to read during certain seasons-Persuasion and Sense & Sensibility are very autumn to me.
I hate the heat(fortunately have some good A/C) but one of the books I'm reading now,The Burning by Thomas Legendre,takes place in Las Vegas and Arizona which are way more hotter than NY so I feel cooled off in comparison:)
A constant sense of tropical heat and humidity makes Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" a perfect winter book--I wouldn't touch it in July. Well, unless somebody's gonna serve me a BIG icy rum drink....
Light on Snow by Anita Shreve. I live in the Mississippi Delta; any suggestion of snow and ice is welcome.
Ramsey Campbell's "Nazereth Hill" chills me to the bone. It's basically about an apartment building that used to be a mental hospital and it's one of the scariest books I've ever read. Set in England, it evokes a damp chill for me.
Smilla's Sense of Snow
A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Brrrr.
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