Autumn is the season I do most of my reading. The light gets slow, the kettle is on all day, and there’s a particular kind of evening — the one where you’re not quite ready for winter — that asks for a specific kind of book.
These are twelve I keep coming back to. None of them are mine. All of them are warm.
The list
- Legends & Lattes — Travis Baldree
- The House in the Cerulean Sea — TJ Klune
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built — Becky Chambers
- The Wind in the Willows — Kenneth Grahame
- Howl’s Moving Castle — Diana Wynne Jones
- The Goblin Emperor — Katherine Addison
- Tea with the Black Dragon — R.A. MacAvoy
- Piranesi — Susanna Clarke
- Spinning Silver — Naomi Novik
- Beloved — Toni Morrison (not cozy. essential.)
- The Hobbit — J.R.R. Tolkien
- Hetty Feather — Jacqueline Wilson
A note on what counts as “cozy”
I don’t think cozy means small, and I don’t think it means safe. Beloved is on this list because grief, properly tended, is also a kind of warmth. So is the kind of attention that Piranesi asks you to bring. The thread that runs through all twelve, for me, is care — for a place, for a person, for a small handful of things you know how to do well.
That’s the cozy I’m chasing in my own books, anyway. Make a cup of tea. Pick one. Let the kettle do the rest.