Best book for a cozy winter night?

The book I am currently reading: "Between A Heart And A Rock Place" by singer Pat Benatar. I love reading autobiographies and biographies and hers is yet another. 7 out of 10 so far. Good read.

I'm reading [italic]Holy Disorders[/italic] by Edmund Crispin.

Even fraus would be embarrassed to say "cozy winter night" in an unironic way

I loved Christodora and Swing Time, OP. Other recent favorites have been Another Brooklyn and A Gentleman in Moscow.

Did anyone else read THE SELLOUT? It is the first American novel EVER to win the Booker. It had humorous moments and was original but I didn't get it. I think there must be a lot of LA inside stuff.

I thought I'd love Zadie Smith because she's a fantastic interview. But, I read her first two books and really didn't like them. I guess the stories were decent, but the writing was aggravating.

Next up on my night table: No Fond Return of Love, Barbara Pym's last book before she quit writing for 16 years and was subsequently rediscovered.

I love Pym. So few gays know her and she should be one of our icons. I've read all the novels but don't remember that one.

Yeah, I thought I'd read all of Pym's novels in the 1980s but looking through my book shelves, found that one to be missing, so just ordered it on Amazon. Can't wait to start it!

I ONCE HAD A MASTER by John Preston

I went through my Gym phase in the 80s as well. I remember that I read them all at least twice. Except for QUARTET IN AUTUMN. Those characters were so skillfully drawn that they still haunt me.

PYM not gym. Damned auto-correct.

I'm reading CHRISTODORA right now and really enjoying it. I've lived in NYC since '81 as a high school grad and some of the parts are making me so melancholy. I know Tim a bit, he is very talented.

I still have all of those beautifully produced little paperbacks from the 1980s of Pym's novels.

I'm reading "Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. Big City" by Mike Davis. It dates from 2000

R5, I loved The Sellout. I thought it was pretty brilliant.

Just bought an old paperback of SHIP OF FOOLS by Katherine Anne Porter.

I read it in junior high when the film came out and remembering really enjoying it though I wonder if a lot of it went over my naïve little gay head. I'm looking forward to trying it again now that I'm older and smarter.

Reading is so boring, why not just watch a good movie?

The Shining

THE TERRANAUTS by the great T.C. Boyle. Totally engrossing and laugh out loud funny at times.

East of Eden. Steinbeck. Read it once 20 years ago. Damn it's good.

R18 is a moron.

I read the Sherlock Holmes mysteries every winter. The stories' atmosphere suits the gloomy weather.

"Call me byYour Name" is stunning. I can't wait to read his other books.

I'm really enjoying Joanne Harris' Five Quarters of the Orange. It's about children living in the countryside of France during WWII and how they unwittingly become involved in the Resistance. Very absorbing, a real page-turner once past the first 50 pages or so.

Harris is the author of Chocolat, though I haven't read that one. I did read her Gentlemen and Players, a thriller with some great twists I highly recommend.

Anything Agatha Christie.

Preferably Miss Marple (A Datalounger by the wee.)

R10, I read that when the cover looked like this. Except for one story I kept coming back to, it wasn't as hard-on-making as I anticipated. I gave it away before a move.

Can anyone spare an FF for r18?

R24 I loved "Call Me By Your Name". I'm usually disappointed in seeing movies that are based on books I have read but maybe this film will be the exception.

What's a cozy winter night?

As both a movie lover and a book lover, I'm currently reading Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel in anticipation of the upcoming film version starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin (I've not seen the 1952 version with Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton -- will watch it after I've finished the book). So far, the book is marvelous.

Blllllll

Nancy Mitford, 'The Pursuit of Love' and 'Love in a Cold Climate.'

Alas, in NY, the weather itself has been too cozy for Feb....

The Dark Tower by Stephen King

R31, My Cousin Rachel is my favorite Du Maurier novel! I myself just watched the Olivia De Havilland version after looking for it for a while.

I had NO IDEA it was being remade! Wow!

If anyone here enjoys audiobooks, this one is narrated by Jonathan Pryce and he does a wonderful job.

I love My Cousin Rachel. Two other very good du Maurier novels that need to receive more attention in the US: Jamaica Inn and The House on the Strand.

Tender is the Night. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Complex. Easy to read.....excellent character development.

DuMaurier has some great short stories, too

R18 is Betsy deVos

I just finished "The Nix" by Nathan Hill which was good. I have started "Lincoln in the Bardo" by George Saunders which is getting raves but I'm really not sold on it. I think Stephen King is a good read for winter, especially something long and really batshit fun like "The Tommyknockers."

I couldn't finish The Nix. It wasn't believable, as far as I got.

Mary Astor's Purple Diary

Lincoln In The Bardo

[quote] I'm reading CHRISTODORA right now and really enjoying it. I've lived in NYC since '81 as a high school grad and some of the parts are making me so melancholy. I know Tim a bit, he is very talented.

I just read it and loved it!!! Met the author too. Highly reommended.

I also just read Stephen MaCauley's "Insignificant OThers". Short and good. I did NOT like "Man of the House" though by him.

One of the first audiobooks I ever listened to was Jamaica Inn read by actor Trevor Eve.

"A cozy winter night"

Sometimes it seems like we're hanging with a bunch of 40 year old spinsters in here.

COZY COZY COZY R46

[bold]GOODBYE, JANETTE[/bold] (1981) by Harold Robbins.

From the cover blurb:

[quote]With her keen instincts and rich sensuality Tanya Pojarska survived the fires of World War II and gained control of a vast fortune. Her two daughters inherited her beauty, her passion--and a legacy of pain and ambition. From a childhood of stark sexual terror, Janette rose to wealth and fame as a high-fashion goddess--while her half-sister Lauren plunged into a dazzling scene of international decadence that almost destroyed her.

The first 100 pages of this multi-generational novel feature heroine Tanya--a Polish countess who survives World War II (with babe Janette) as a German general's concubine; at war's end, however, the general must flee and Tanya must enter a marriage of finance/convenience with Maurice, a bisexual, monstrously well-endowed sadist with whom she shares control of assorted stolen companies; and when Maurice's S/M goes too far (he violently initiates Janette), Tanya tries to kill him and winds up dead. So gorgeous Janette and baby half-sister Lauren (fathered by one of Tanya's extramarital lovers) must fend for themselves.

Janette, now mostly lesbian, determines to turn the family business into a Paris fashion empire; she becomes the perfect mannequin (via surgery), a top model, head of her own company. Meanwhile Lauren grows up in California with foster-parents (the estate's executors), acquires a drug-dealer boyfriend, visits Janette, briefly stars in her sister's all-red fashion show. And when Janette runs into money problems, she sells Lauren in marriage to British aristocrat Patrick--a beautiful, bisexual masochist who digs Janette's sadism. If you like your sex steamy and your dialogue shocking ("Eat my cunt". . . "Stick it in her mouth, Jerry!"), you'll want to say Hello, Janette as soon as you can get a copy.

Needless to say, this was a huge bestseller at the time. The novel ranked seventh on the Publisher's Weekly bestseller list for 1981.

R36, I agree. I love Jamaica Inn and House on the Strand as well. Du Maurier has a way with a sinister scene!

I have to reread both - thanks for reminding me. I just bought The King's General on Audible.

R38, YES! And they stay with you. I read one about incest years ago...and it really disturbed me. Also, some old stories were just discovered - did you read The Doll? Yikes.

R48 I love Goodbye Janette but it's not for the faint of heart.

Starting in about 6th grade, I used to raid my grandmother's bookcase for juicy novels. Many were old classics of pop lit like Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls but they weren't too shocking, given their reputations for scandal. Yes, Peyton Place - like Goodbye, Janette - had a stepfather who rapes his stepdaughter but in PP it was handled tastefully.

In the Robbins novel, wow! I was actually shocked out of my mind. Mind you, I was probably 13 at the time, but still...I can remember one section where Maurice, the stepfather, makes Janette dress up in lacy lingerie and her pubic hair is peeking out from the tiny panties. He says, "You've got a big, bushy whore's cunt just like your mother!"

I nearly dropped the book.

Almost any Aggie Christie.

Gravity's Rainbow

[quote]"You've got a big, bushy whore's cunt just like your mother!"

I've got to work this into conversation some day.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood.

''This other Eden'' by Ben Elton