Top Ten Tuesday: Rainy Day Reads

Back at it with your weekly dose of bookish lists, Top Ten Tuesday. While not a full return to blogging, yet, inspiration struck for this week’s topic when I had a spare moment to open my dusty laptop and compile a few thoughts.

This Spring, adjusting to a new job and ending each day mentally exhausted means I’ve pretty much been a couch queen. Although Ohio’s weather hasn’t been horrendous, we’ve done the typical four-seasons-in-one-day-dance often. To quote comedian Jim Gaffigan on how fleeting nice weather can be in the Midwest: “Spring. That’s always a nice day, right?”. Stuck indoors due to gray days too? This week’s TTT asks what is the best type of read to curl up with and ride out the storm?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl since January of 2018. Jana writes, “it was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.” In that spirit, link up with your list at That Artsy Reader Girl and comment with your list, link, or thoughts below.

Rainy Day Reads

Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, making it a perfect opportunity to spend time reading verse. If weather can affect mood (as it does mine), rainy days may spark a more emotional connection to poetry.

Currently infatuated with Mary Oliver, while enjoying a Dickinson and early 20th century poet phase.

Epic fantasies

I’m thinking Game of Thrones (finally, winter is here), Tolkien’s works, or the trilogy which I hope to start soon, The Kingkiller Chronicles of Patrick Rothfuss. Getting tangled up in a prolonged narrative in which the hero battles supernatural, and often natural forces, is an ideal way to while away a rainy day.

Sherlock Holmes stories

Puddle-soaked streets of serpentine London. Shadowy figures and nefarious deeds committed by lamplight. Plus Holmes’ gathering of hidden clues and suspenseful narration told through the reassuring voice of Dr. Watson equals my go-to rainy day recommendation.

Books with a melancholic tone

Embrace the dark and moody rainy season with some of these recommended melancholy novels:

All the Light We Cannot See– a five-star dual narrative that lands heavily on the sobering side of literature. Two young protagonists, one French, one German, frozen at a single point in time. Their lives unknowingly influenced by each other’s pasts, in a desperate, simultaneous fight for their lives. The story centers around how they got to that moment and the tension building climax as they reach out to each other.
Previously reviewed here.

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Only slightly more uplifting-The Fault in Our Stars, Never Let Me Go, and The Book Thief offer tales of woe. Featuring harsh reality, love and heartbreak, life, death, and the battle between powerlessness and hope. (Okay, Never Let Me Go is not uplifting in any way, but I do recommend it as a memorable read).

Storms, Floods and Natural Disasters

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If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em with these stories; both fiction and non, in which weather wreaks havoc with the lives of the characters during story-altering storms.

There you have it. (Technically) 10 choices for a rainy day. Are your reading selections influenced by the weather? Of course I read on clement spring days too, but sunlight can be awfully distracting. I hope you have access to the snuggliest blanket and biggest mug of hot tea when it’s raining books this spring.