Warming Up to Winter - essays, cookery and paranormal romance

Winter can a tough time of year, as it is mostly cold, dark and blustery. But with a positive attitude, it can be a beautiful and exciting time of the year.  Here are three rather disparate titles that all celebrate the beauty and excitement of winter. Embrace and enjoy the season!

Winter : five windows on the season (M)
by Adam Gopnik

"In this ruminative collection, Gopnik offers five essays on winter-exploring it as season and idea, elemental force and cultural influence. The New Yorker staff writer and author of Paris to the Moon composed these pieces for the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Massey Lectures. He acknowledges that "chapters are meant to sound vocal" and rough edges have been left in place.

Readers will find pleasures of the serendipitous variety, including introductions to Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, the underground architect Vincent Ponte, and the engineers who helped developed central heating. Gopnik's round-the-world tour of "romantic winter" covers more than 200 years in art, music, poetry, literature, and theology. In "Radical Winter," he describes the absurd courage of the men who raced for glory at the North and South Poles; in "Recreational Winter," he untangles the motley origins of ice hockey. Though the prose moves slowly at times, Gopnik leavens dense material with humor, and makes unwieldy concepts accessible through modern-day comparisons (consider Dickens the Francis Ford Coppola of his day). In the end, the lectures serve as Gopnik's equivalent to a Playmate's "turn-ons and turn-offs." That being the case, we'd call him a worthy Mr. December." Publisher Weekly

Roast Figs, Sugar Snow : winter food to warm the soul (M)
by Diana Henry

British author Henry (The Gastropub Cookbook) presents a soul-stirring collection of winter comfort food as warm and welcoming as a cup of hot cocoa on a snowy day. Henry warms readers with mulled wine, rich Onion and Cider Soup and a Camembert-topped slice of toasted bread, a pumpkin tart with spinach and gorgonzola and Stuffed Quail with Marmalade and Whiskey. Henry's Eurocentric lineup includes regional favorites like Romanian Bean, Smoked Bacon and Sour Cream Soup, Sorbronade (essentially a simpler cassoulet) and a Tagliatelle with roast pumpkin, sage, ricotta and smoked cheese from northern Italy. She also offers dishes from this side of the pond, such as a Quebecois Mussel Chowder with Cod and Cider as well as classic baked beans. A tendency to ramble, waxing poetic about the wonders of pears or cranberries, but is all a part of Henry's charm. Peppered with snow-filled snapshots, the work as a whole makes a kind of greatest wintertime hits." -Publisher Weekly

Nocturne: a haunting story of forbidden love (M)
by Syrie James

"Unconscious and stranded in the Colorado Rockies after her car skids off an icy road during a blizzard, Nicole Whitcomb awakes in the magnificent, isolated mountain home of the astonishingly good-looking man who rescued her. Michael Tyler is brilliant, reclusive, enigmatic, and a potentially deadly, centuries-old vampire. Now, snowbound together until the storm ends and the roads can be cleared, they begin a wary, star-crossed journey from attraction to passion as Nicole's fears and Michael's bloodlust war with their love for each other. Beautifully descriptive, well written, and simply plotted, this story spans only four days and features just two characters, but as the story progresses they grow individually, as well as in their relationship, and are profoundly changed as a result. Verdict Lyrical, lush, and intensely romantic, this infinitely touching, bittersweet story from James (Dracula, My Love) will weave its way into readers' hearts, with its complex characters and compelling emotions sure to linger long after the last page has been turned. While not a romance in the truest sense, this novel will have a poignant appeal for romance as well as paranormal fans and provides a slim glimmer of hope for the optimists among us." - Library Journal