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10 Snow Day Reading Strategies

Stuck inside on a snow day? These reading tips will help you cope with the cabin fever.

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Jessica Woodbury

Staff Writer

Jessica Woodbury's professional life has taken her to prisons, classrooms, strip clubs, and her living room couch. After years as a Public Defender in the South, she now lives in Boston with her two small children. Cursed with a practical streak, she always wanted to pursue music or writing but instead majored in Biochemistry because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. These days she does absolutely nothing with science or law and instead spends too much time oversharing on the internet. She has a soft spot for crime novels and unreliable narrators. And the strip club gig was totally as a lawyer, she swears.  Blog: Don't Mind the Mess Twitter: jessicaesquire

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A snow day may mean working from home, wrangling restless kids, or a long binge-watching session on Netflix. But if you decide to go the reading route for your snow day, here are 10 ways to make it work and keep cabin fever at bay.

1. Get Cozy

Take your favorite book, make a cup of cocoa, get a fire going, and take a seat by the window where you can watch the snow falling.  This works better for the first couple snow days, but is less effective when you’re on the sixth in 3 weeks.

2. Weather Escapism

It’s the perfect time to pull out a series set in the Miami sunshine. The South Florida mystery is practically its own genre. Try Carl Hiaasen or Elaine Viets.

3. Entire World Escapism

Fantasy and alternate worlds can help you forget about how awful your current one is. Bonus points for a desert planet.

4. It Could Be Worse

Go full-on apocalyptic. Plagues, violence, society falling apart at the seams. The danger here is that it might start to feel a little bit too close to reality.

5. Go Full Ingalls

Appreciate the relative comfort of your home with its central heating system and electricity by marathon-reading the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Maybe by the time you finish The Long Winter, it’ll be spring.

6. Doorstop Time

You know that big book, the big fat one that you bought with excellent intentions and never read? Maybe it’s The Goldfinch or (in my case) that Einstein biography, but now you’ve finally got no excuse. Open up that puppy and dig in. It’s better than digging through the snow.

7. Free Fun

Get 10 free Kindle books, read the first chapter of each one, and then finish the one you like the best. The free book list can take some patience to work through- luckily you’ve got time to spare.

8. Repent of Your Sins of Omission

That copy of Don Quixote you bought and never finished? The first volume of Proust you’ve always meant to get to? Scratch one book off your never-finished list.

9. Educate Yourself

Do some educational reading on Seasonal Affective Disorder, Meteorology, or Climate Change. At least this way when you get back to a normal life you’ll have all kinds of interesting tidbits to share.

10. Embrace the Chaos

Just read The Shining and be done with it. You’ve never been in a better situation to judge its accuracy.