Reading Place: Last Gasp of Winter

This time of year, I’m always hoping for one last snowstorm or cold snap. I love winter, and am always sad to see it go. To give the season a proper goodbye, these links celebrate all things cold things cold and snowy:

At Brevity, Amy Butcher reflects on ice skating.

At The New York Review of Books, Ian Frazier reviews a new anthology of writing about the Arctic.

Did you know there is some debate as to whether or not bears actually hibernate in winter? Slate investigates—and also fills you in the sex lives of bears, in case you were wondering.

I live near a cruise ship terminal where the Queen Mary 2 docks, and so I’ve always been curious what it would be like to take it all the way to England. At the New York Times, book reviewer Dwight Garner describes a winter crossing.

Keith Gessen embarks on a considerably less luxurious wintry crossing when he travels with a bulk carrier ship on its journey from Murmansk, Russia, to China. The ship takes a northern route through the Arctic Circle—a route that has only recently been possible, as a result of global warming.

Finally, an elegy for snow.

 

Hannah Gersen is the Dispatches Editor of The Common.

 

Reading Place: Last Gasp of Winter

Related Posts

white, wooden cross on the shore of a river. the colors of the image give off a pale-ish atmosphere, like a storm is coming

On Drowning

LONNIE LARSEN
On a Pacific Northwest wild-fire summer evening, Emmett and I drive the babysitter while the edges of the world burn. She’s chatty and optimistic about fall classes, but I’m distracted by the sun, which is Crayola-Orange, perfect circle, unnatural and eerie.

Image of the two beige tombstones of Jamali and Kamali laying side by side

Jamali Kamali Airborne in History

KAREN CHASE
Opening oneself to the unknown paves the way for a large exploration rather than the up-close details of “what I know.” The unknown is a wider plain—a big, flat, open space where options abound. The endless screen makes possible a roomier grasp of universals.

Saint Omer

Review: SAINT OMER

HANNAH GERSEN
The film’s dual focus—on both Rama, the writer, and Laurence, the young woman accused of infanticide—turns the trial into something other than pure spectacle and results in a story that looks closely at the frighteningly powerful bond between mother and child.