Between dodging rain and enjoying the little sunlight in the day, cold winter nights are the perfect time to delve into the reads you might have left half-finished.
A splash of escapism is desperately needed when it’s more tempting to stay in the warmth and scroll, so we asked some of our favourite bookheads which novels help them fight off the winter blues.
Criteria was kept simple: any book you've (actually) read and enjoyed recently. We received a range of answers; old to new, best-sellers to niche picks, dreamy and abstract to honest and biographical.
Let these books keep you figuratively warm on drizzly days, and when you’re done, flick through last year’s winter reads and our summer reads of 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021.
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, $28
Read and recommended by Lola Bellamy-Hill, head of customer service at Crushes
You’re strolling through Auckland Central Library where a cover of a girl trapped in a house welcomes you in. While technically a memoir, Carmen’s story takes you on a journey through a toxic and emotionally abusive partner through a variety of genres. The relationship and its undertow moves throughout genres effortlessly to show how subtle manipulation and isolation can be. Dream House transports you to the conventional (Romantic Comedy, Disney Movie) into the more niche. It’s also written almost entirely in second-tense, forcing you to build and tear down each version of the Dream House attempting to get to the truth.
There’s a particular tableau of ‘Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure’ that still sticks with you to this day. You re-read it over and over on your flat’s porch, astonished that the rhythm felt so familiar to you. A small tear slips down your cheek on an otherwise gorgeous Summer’s eve. Carmen’s story is unconventional, lyrical, and disquieting. You can’t stop recommending it to your friends, and they’re sick of you saying it should be the new essential modern queer text.
Also read and recommended by Nabeelah Khan, writer, model, and content producer at Datacom
This book was gifted to me two years ago on my birthday, which falls on the winter solstice - fitting for Ensemble’s winter reading list. Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is a chilling, haunting memoir that pulls you into its eerie depths.
Her lyrical prose unearths the complex trauma of an abusive queer relationship at the hands of the "woman in the dream house", a charismatic yet volatile figure. The "dream house" isn’t a literal place - it’s a figurative, almost palatable escape that Machado constructs to cope with the abuse. It’s transcendent, an out-of-body realm where readers peer through the windows of memory, witnessing the haunting complexities within.
Machado tells queer stories that aren’t just ‘good’ representations but the truth - that queerness can be ugly, abusive, beautiful, healing and empowering. This book leaves an emotional hangover that lingers long after the final page.
The Door by Magda Szabó, $38
Read and recommended by Isabelle Carson, showroom and PR account manager at Showroom 22
I first read Magda Szabó last year, and she has quickly become one of my favourite authors. She is a master at exploring the intimacies of human relationships in a way that feels contemplative, rather than confronting. It's these kinds of books I love to read during the colder months. I would highly recommend any of her work, and despite their introspective nature I love finding myself in vividly-described Hungary, and always in a historically interesting time, whether it be the German occupation in the 1940s, or post-WWII under communist control.
The Door is an unsettling and slightly dark story spanning 20 years (1960s-1980s) about Magda, a writer, and her housekeeper, Emerence. It questions what it is we truly owe people when we enter into relationships with them, no matter what kind, and what love actually means. It's a depiction of how long it takes to truly know someone, and how even then, secrets can remain. The door mentioned is both literal and metaphorical, and this book has stayed with me since finishing it a few months ago.
A Month In The Country by J. L. Carr, $23
Read and recommended by Emma Gleason, writer, editor of Crust, and Ensemble contributing editor
A moving little novella published in 1980, A Month In The Country is an insular, contained story set in 1920 in rural Yorkshire, with most of the action happening around Oxgodby's old church, where the protagonist Tom Birkin is uncovering a historic mural. Information is elegantly peppered, and from the scant details given to us we know he was in the war and it was bad. Birkin's narration gives equal thrall to mechanics, architecture and nature, and the book's a character study of human eccentricities, regional vernacular and village politics. There are bigger themes too, like spirituality and faith, social change, and how on earth to put broken people back together again. I really loved this.
When The Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During The Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter, $40, and No Words For This by Ali Mau, $40
Read and recommended by Rebecca Wadey, Ensemble co-founder and partnerships director
I didn’t mean to buy these to read as companion pieces but they honestly really work in that way. As a longtime stan of Graydon Carter’s Vanity Fair and the world it inhabited, I absolutely inhaled this (interesting that his career has been bookended by start-ups – starting with Spy magazine and finishing with AirMail) and as a consumer of media, I found it interesting to read after Ali’s book which is about a similar time in New Zealand in our own much more subdued way. Much of that time, of course, treated Ali extremely badly but it’s hard to fathom highly paid paparazzi and media organisations giving targets lessons in defensive driving. Or even, in more recent years, media organisations investing in journalism that holds powerful men to account.
Semi Gloss by Justine Cullen, $33
Read and recommended by Sophie Negus, model, content creator and marketing assistant at Papier hq
A former colleague gifted me a copy of Semi-Gloss during my internship at a local magazine, and it’s the one book I’ve been (slowly) chipping away at for the past few months. Written by Justine Cullen, the former editor-in-chief of Elle Australia [Ed’s note: and recently InStyle Australia], this memoir is sharp, self-aware and genuinely funny.
Even though it was published a few years ago, it’s still incredibly relevant – especially for anyone interested in fashion, media or the chaos that often exists behind the scenes of both. As someone fairly familiar with how the industry operates in New Zealand, I loved seeing how Cullen’s experience in Australia compared – it had all the glamour and chaos of The Devil Wears Prada, but filtered through Aussie humour and down-to-earth realness that felt close to home. It’s also the kind of book you can put down and come back to easily – which is ideal if, like me, you tend to have a few things on the go at once.
Butter by Asako Yuzuki, $35
Read and recommended by Sophie Albornett, Ensemble intern
As someone who’s been to Japan once and never shuts up about the food, a true crime dabbler and journalism student, Butter sounded right up my alley. Inspired by the real-life ‘Konkatsu Killer’, journo Rika Machida investigates the murders and lore surrounding alleged serial killer and gourmet home cook Manako Kaji. Plain white rice has never sounded as indulgent and mouth-watering as Yuzuki describes it. I went in expecting a whodunnit, but was served an equally thrilling dissection of Japanese gender roles, cuisine and the complexity of female friendships.
See How They Fall by Rachel Paris, $38
Read and recommended by Zoe Walker Ahwa, Ensemble co-founder and editor
I read this, cosied up in bed, in one sitting one rainy weekend: the ideal winter weekend book. The Auckland-based author, former corporate lawyer Rachel, received a lot of buzz and press on its release - it was her debut novel, written as part of Auckland University’s Master of Creative Writing programme, and it's already been optioned by an American production company. I picked it up totally blind, knowing nothing of the back story (I did read this once I'd finished), just a recommendation from Rebecca that it was a fun and easy read. It has it all - a uber-wealthy Sydney family, resentment and secrets, murder, grand homes, commentary on motherhood, workplace sexism - and it moves quickly (there were maybe one too many twists), so again, the ideal winter book for those with TikTok-addled attention spans.
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