The Book Review: Snowstorm reading
Plus: new books we loved this week.
Books
January 23, 2026
This is a picture of Central Park during snowfall.
Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dear readers,

Whoever is doing P.R. for this weekend’s snowstorm is probably due for a raise. I’m in a minority of New Yorkers who look forward to winter each year, and the hours before a storm here always delight me to no end. We see major snow accumulation roughly as often as a new Donna Tartt novel (it’s been quite a while since “The Goldfinch" — tick, tock!) so I’m hoping and praying to wake up to a pile the height of my neighbor’s Pomeranian on Sunday.

Naturally, we have suitable reading suggestions for whatever inclemency is headed your way. This is a list of 10 great books to last through long winter nights, including fantasy epics, pastoral classics and family dramas. (I expect to tear through an alarming work of nonfiction by Jon Krakauer, myself.)

And my colleague Elisabeth Egan whirled through an utterly charming selection of children’s books about snow, ones that might appeal to even the most winter-averse grumps among us. “Snow is a joy we can’t buy, an event we can’t control, the closest thing we have to magic during its brief time on earth,” she writes. Like snowflakes, no two of these books are exactly alike.

See you next week.

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