Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books With A Snowy Setting (brrrr!)

snowy10Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week.

This week’s theme is Top Ten Favorite Books With X Setting. I always enjoy the topics that are a bit open-ended like this — it’s so much fun to see the creative ideas that bloggers come up with! I myself was feeling a bit less than creative… but for whatever weird reason, sitting here in the middle of summer, I started thinking about snow… and cold… and ice… and Antarctica. So for no very good reason, my theme this week is snowy settings — books that either take place entirely in a snowy or bitterly cold place, or have very memorable scenes that take place someplace full of snow and ice.

(A note about me: I HATE being cold. So this is a weird choice for me. Still. Here we go.)

The Snow ChildA Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)The Silent LandThe Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #2)The Shining (The Shining, #1)The Long Winter (Little House, #6)Life As We Knew It (Last Survivors, #1)Midwives The Snowy Day

1) The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey: This magical story of a childless couple who may (or may not) have made a snow child that comes to life is full of bone-chilling descriptions of life on an Alaskan homestead.

2) A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin: The Wall! A giant wall made of ice! Need I say more?

3) The Silent Land by Graham JoyceHonestly, one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, set in and around a ski resort in the Pyrenees during an avalanche. Snow everywhere!

4)The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: I just love the armored bears (hurray for Iorek Byrnison!) and the gloom and mystery of the Far North.

5) The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis: The White Witch has condemned Narnia to a never-ending winter. Snow, snow, everywhere! It actually looks lovely, but all the talking animals seem to want spring to arrive.

6) The Shining by Stephen King: A family spending the winter snowed in at a creepy mountainside hotel? Now there’s a recipe for a relaxing vacation!

7) The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder: Those blizzards scared the heck out of me at a young age.

8) Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer: An intense world-wide winter brought on by global natural disaster. Let this be a lesson to all of us: Keep canned food on hand at all times.

9) Midwives by Chris Bohjalian: Or, the perils of a home birth in the middle of winter in Vermont. Just saying.

10) The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats: A perfect picture of all the ways a kid can have fun on a day full of snow. Because I really should end this list on a cheery note, don’t you think?

I thought I’d have a hard time coming up with ten — but as it turns out, I could have kept going! So I’ll give “honorable mention” to a few more books set in the ice or snow, best read with a warm quilt and a cup of hot chocolate:

  • Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (for the Antarctica scenes)
  • Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
  • Ice Bound by Dr. Jerri Nielsen
  • Mrs. Mike by Benedict & Nancy Freedman
  • Odd & The Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
  • The Wolves of Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater
  • The Ice Dragon by George R. R. Martin
  • The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

See, I don’t compulsively include the same books every week! Look, I made it through a whole top 10 list without mentioning Harry Potter, The Sparrow, or Outlander… oops.

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25 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books With A Snowy Setting (brrrr!)

  1. Great list. I also love to see what other bloggers come up with when it is open-ended! I love the setting of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe! 😀

  2. I love your choice of setting! There’s something so magical about snow. I haven’t read many of these, but I love The Golden Compass (although I know it as Northern Lights). I need to re-read His Dark Materials as I don’t think I ever finished The Amber Spyglass…

    Also, could you imagine if someone offered Shining inspired vacation packages?! Moving topiaries optional!

    Great List!

    • I have a friend who’s been to the hotel that The Shining is based on! Nothing scarier than a poor wifi connection happened, as far as I know. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!

    • Isn’t is lovely? It’s one of those ones on my “keep forever” shelf, now that my kids have outgrown it — someday, they’ll be glad I save it!

    • I really do need to reread the Pullman books — that’s a world I’d love to revisit! I suppose by the time the next ASoIaF book comes out, I’ll have to reread all of those as well!

  3. Interesting list! I’ve been wanting to read The Snow Child for ages, so I’m thinking this winter will be a good time to curl up with it. And after being obsessed with A Game of Thrones on TV, I think it’s high time I read the books.

    • Thanks for the recommendation! Silly me, I like my winter books in the summer — and when the snow actually starts to fall, I want to read about warm, sunny places!

    • Aw, thanks! I almost skipped this week — my creative juices just weren’t flowing! — but the snow topic was a fun one to play with. I’m glad to meet another fan of The Golden Compass! I really need to reread that series one of these days.

    • The Snow Child is lovely — full of magic as well as gorgeous descriptions of Alaska. I think I’d be too cold to read it in winter! I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for stopping by!

    • Hi Jess – Welcome! And thanks for the follow! It’s been so long since I read The Giver, I have no memory of a snow scene in it — but that just goes to show that I should re-read it! Have you read the other books in the series after Life As We Knew It? I didn’t love all of them, but #2 was really, really good as well.

      • I’ve got #2 and I received #4 on Edelweiss, so I’ll probably be reading soon.

        I had to take a break from them, because the things that happened were SO real, it was definitely eerie to read about.

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