Reading has seasons, or at least it can. Nicole Junkerman likes to let the time of year shape what she reads, and spring in particular invites a certain kind of book: lighter, more hopeful, open like a window. This note offers a seasonal reading list, less a fixed set of titles than a set of moods and directions, so you can fill it with whatever speaks to you. The aim is to match your reading to the lengthening, brightening days.
There is nothing scientific about reading by season. It is simply a pleasure, a way of letting the world outside the window and the world inside the book rhyme a little. In the depths of winter we reach for long, immersive books and dark, cosy stories. In spring the appetite shifts toward openness, beginnings and light. Here are a few directions for the season, each one a doorway rather than a single book.
Books about beginnings
Spring is the season of beginnings, so it is a natural time for books about fresh starts: a character setting out, a life changing direction, a journey beginning. Coming of age novels suit the season especially well, full as they are of first times and open roads. The feeling you are after is forward motion, the sense of a door opening, which matches the season outside.
Nature writing and the outdoors
As the world turns green again, nature writing comes into its own. Spring is the perfect time to read about gardens, walks, birds and the turning year. This is a rich and growing field, and a public reference such as the page on nature writing is a good map of its history. A book read outdoors, in a garden or a park, with the very things it describes around you, is one of the season's quiet joys.
Lighter, hopeful fiction
Spring is a fine time to set aside the heaviest books for a while and choose fiction with a lighter heart: warm novels, gentle comedies, stories that leave you more hopeful than you started. There is real skill in a book that is kind without being slight, and the longer evenings are the perfect setting for one. Nicole Junkerman keeps a small shelf of such books for exactly this season.
Let the world outside the window and the world inside the book rhyme.
Poetry for short sittings
Spring and poetry have always belonged together. With more light in the evenings and a lighter mood in the air, it is a good season to read a poem or two at a time, slowly, on a bench or by an open window. If you are new to reading poetry for pleasure, generous archives such as the Poetry Foundation let you browse freely until something catches you. A single good poem can be the whole of an evening's reading and feel like plenty.
Travel books for the planning season
Spring is when many people begin to plan summer journeys, which makes it the ideal time for travel writing. A good travel book read now does double duty: it is a pleasure in itself, and it quietly shapes where you might go. The post on slow travel and quiet reading explains how the two feed each other, and the one on quiet cities for readers offers some destinations to read toward.
Re-reading in spring
Spring is also a fine season for re-reading. There is a particular pleasure in returning to a beloved book as the year turns, meeting it again with another year of living behind you. A book read at twenty is a different book at forty, not because the words have changed but because you have. Nicole Junkerman keeps a small handful of books she returns to most springs, and each visit reveals something the last one missed.
Re-reading suits the lighter mood of the season because it asks nothing of you. There is no plot to keep up with, no effort of orientation, just the comfort of familiar pages and the quiet surprise of noticing new things in them. If your reading habit feels stalled, a spring re-read of an old favourite is one of the gentlest ways to start it moving again, like calling on an old friend who is always glad to see you.
How to use a seasonal list
A seasonal list works best held loosely. The point is not to read all of it, or to read only what fits the season. The point is to let the time of year nudge you gently, to notice that a bright spring evening might call for something different from a dark December night. Reading by season is one more way to keep reading fresh and personal, attached to your own life rather than to a chart.
So as the days lengthen, let your reading lighten a little. Choose a book about a beginning, a piece of nature writing for the garden, a hopeful novel for the long evening, a poem for the bench, a travel book for the journey ahead. Fill the list with your own choices and read them at your own pace. If you are still building the habit, the post on a gentle reading habit will help. Nicole Junkerman wishes you a bright and bookish spring.