The Winter Archive, part 2

Nothing can be as peaceful and endless as a long winter darkness. (Tove Jansson)

Jan 12, 2025

∙ Paid

The start of a new year is always filled with excitement. Welcome back to The Winter Archive! I hope January is treating you well, but if it’s been hard and a little overwhelming, don’t worry! I’ve put together a list of movies, songs, books, and art to help lift your spirits and make this month a little better. Happy reading.

—Ella

wearing — january fragrance

L’Eau Papier by Diptyque.

I’m very aware that many consider L’Eau Papier a very spring scent, but to me, it feels like pure winter. I use it mostly during January, and I keep it with me through March. It’s perfect for those sunny but freezing days of the season. It reminds me of light spring snow, and buying a bouquet of flowers on a chilly morning.

reading — january books

The True Deceiver written by Tove Jansson

Snow has been falling on the village all winter long. It covers windows and piles up in front of doors. The sun rises late and sets early, and even during the day there is little to do but trade tales. This year everybody’s talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. She has no use for the white lies that smooth social intercourse, and she can see straight to the core of any problem. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, appears to be Katri’s opposite: a respected member of the village, if an aloof one. Anna lives in a large empty house, venturing out in the spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. But Anna has something Katri wants, and to get it Katri will take control of Anna’s life and livelihood. By the time spring arrives, the two women are caught in a conflict of ideals that threatens to strip them of their most cherished illusions.

Eileen written by Ottessa Moshfegh

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.

Cold Enough for Snow written by Jessica Au

A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo: they walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the typhoon rains, share meals in small cafes and restaurants, and visit galleries to see some of the city's most radical modern art. All the while, they talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes, and objects, about family, distance, and memory. But uncertainties abound. Who is really speaking here - is it only the daughter? And what is the real reason behind this elliptical, perhaps even spectral journey? At once a careful reckoning and an elegy, *Cold Enough for Snow* questions whether any of us speak a common language, which dimensions can contain love, and what claim we have to truly know another's inner world.

Misery written by Stephen King

Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.

watching — january movies

A few movies that remind me of this month, as you can see I included a couple of book-to-screen adaptations of a few books I mentioned on my ‘to read’ list earlier!

Ella’s Archive