Welcome to Book Talk, where we help you find new fuel for your bookish obsession. While you might not find these authors while scrolling short-form content online, you will find their work to be significant, impactful, and, hopefully, something you reach for time and again. Happy reading!
Katherine May, while understated and down to earth, is prolific in her craft.
At this point in her life, May has published five books of fiction, non-fiction, and essays. One of these books — Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times (2020) was adapted for BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week and shortlisted for the Barnes & Noble Book of the Year in 2020. She also writes a Substack newsletter, The Clearing, that’s all sorts of cozy, and hosts a podcast, How We Live Now — both are perfect for when you have a few minutes and need to feel some comfort. In her spare time (haha) she also makes room to attend numerous speaking and workshop engagements, while also offering her coaching services to aspiring non-fiction authors.
As you know by now, I have a love of writing that delves into the heart of the person writing it, that feels more like a conversation between friends (as always, bonus points if it’s like reading someone’s diary entries). So when I opened to the first page of Wintering in the library on a cool October morning, I knew it would be my new obsession. May’s words are direct without seeming harsh, writing in a way that gets to the point while still being relatable and kind.
Beyond this, I felt a particular relatedness with Wintering, since I seem to experience more winters than I would like. Don’t get me wrong — I love winter. It’s just that I don’t appreciate when it barrels through in the middle of August, or lingers for five months longer than it should, or leaves us leaning heavy on our ever-depleting resources. (I mean this in a metaphorical sense, but also in exaggerated terms of climate change. Nobody wants more winter than they can handle.)
Part of my love for May’s work is purely biased, in that I share a lot of commonalities with her (at least in the parts that she shares of herself in her books and online). Her writing also scores points in that it’s some of the most comforting work I’ve come across. Even when talking about stressful life events or uncertainty, May has a way of wording her work to make it seem that everything will be okay in the end — and if it isn’t, then that’s okay, too.
I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes from Wintering, in case this season has been particularly hard on you this year.
“We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”
Happy reading!
