I thought I’d never grow out of reading. 2020 had me wondering if I was wrong.

In the shitshow that was last year, I scarcely had any time for reading. Correction: made any time for reading. With the slump of quarantine, I fell headfirst into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and other wholesome games that really let me escape. It was what I needed at the time. It was a real “No Thoughts, Head Empty” time. I even stopped listening to audiobooks. I wasn’t driving anywhere. I had completely lost interest.

I finally started reading again last summer, when I got a new job at an ice cream shop in my hometown. Early on, I was given permission to read at the counter while I waited for customers. The shrivelled-up bookworm inside of me leapt for joy. I purchased the books I had put on my “to be read” list earlier that year (before COVID-19 reared its ugly head) and devoured them all.

This year, I’ve started writing again! As in, properly setting myself deadlines for a novel that I’m genuinely excited about. It’s a YA adaptation of Frankenstein, set in an alternate universe where the Monster rescues Frankenstein's female creature from destruction, and raises her in the Scottish Highlands, hiding the origin of her creation from her, all while avoiding Victor Frankenstein's efforts to hunt them down.

So for 2021, I decided to set the year off right by choosing a reading list for myself that will not only inspire me to finish my book but to really immerse myself in the world of my novel. I’m looking for cottagecore and hygge vibes, with a little bit of a spooky, witchy flair.

The big word here is: cozy.

Without further adieu, here are my cozy book picks for 2021.

COTTAGECORE BOOKS

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

This book hits all the boxes. A grisly murder. An eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters. Did I mention bees? I’ve always heard this book mentioned as a modern classic, and I’m excited to lose myself to this book.

The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning, Long Litt Woon

I think this book might make me cry. It’s hard to imagine how exactly shrooming helped author Long Litt Woon to mourn the loss of her husband, but you know there’s going to be some tears involved.

The Little Book of Cottagecore, Emily kent

I’ve seen these “Little Book of” books on the impulse buys shelves at bookstores a dozen times. Trust me, I’ve been tempted to make that impulse purchase. Slap a basket of bread on the cover and I’m sold. I know I’m not the only one who got into breadmaking and crafting this year, and this seems like the perfect collection of every cottagecore activity you’ve ever wanted to try but didn’t know how to start!

YA BOOKS BASED ON CLASSIC LIT

The Guinevere Deception, Kiersten White

This is actually my first read for the year, and I’ll just say, I’m here for it. I used to LIVE off of the Merlin BBC show. So when I found a book based on the Arthurian legends told from the perspective of Guinevere? Heeeeeck yes. Oh wait, in this YA adaptation, Guinevere is a fairy changeling sent by Merlin to protect King Arthur? Even better!

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The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, Kiersten White

You better believe the first thing I did when I started writing my Frankenstein YA novel was to research who else had written other adaptations. I was so pleased to find another YA novel which paints Victor Frankenstein as an irate asshole. If you’ve ever felt for Elizabeth while reading Frankenstein, or hate Victor as much as I do, this looks like the book for you.

Legendborn, Tracy Deonn

Again. A YA adaptation of Arthurian legend. But this time with a black protagonist. Count. Me. In. To me, this book looks like Merlin BBC meets The Magicians, if The Magicians was entirely told through the perspective of Julia. I’m here for it!

SPOOKY BOOKS

Slasher Girls and Monster Boys, April Genevieve Tucholke

I’ve had my eyes on this anthology for a while. A bunch of Young Adult authors, coming together to write a collection of horror and thrillers? Yes. It’s been a goal of mine to one day publish a collection of my own short horror stories, so I’m very excited to see how the experts do it.

Burn Our Bodies Down, Rory Power

When this book was released earlier in 2020, I saw it everywhere. It gives me big Sharp Objects vibes, and I’m loving it. Family secrets? Check. A past that’s buried in a town that has been hidden from the main character her whole life? Check again.

Horrid, Katrina Leno

Nothing says cozy AND creepy quite like moving into a dilapidated old New England manor. Especially when there might be at least one ghost involved. It’s unclear to me whether the “haunting” in this book is a literal or an emotional one (why not both?) but it involves a main character finding a secret children’s room, which is everything I want in a book and more.

TRUE CRIME BOOKS

The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, Emma Copley Eisenberg

Listening to the My Favorite Murder podcast got me interested in reading non-fiction for the first time, as long as it’s true crime. This one looks particularly… heavy. A double murder of two young women in West Virginia, long gone cold. It looks to be as much of an investigation into the culture of Appalachia as it is about the murders themselves.

Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe

What drew me to this book is that it seems to be an exploration of the culture surrounding true crime, rather than an investigation of true crime itself. Specifically how women interact with true crime. If you were a fan of the Casting JonBenet doc on Netflix like I was, this one might be for you.

Dark Places, Gillian Flynn

I downloaded this one for Audible ages ago, after I devoured Sharp Objects on my old commute to work. You cannot go wrong with Gillian Flynn. You just can’t. Dark Places almost seems to give slight Atonement vibes, with a main character who testified against her brother for a crime he might not have committed… and which she seems to know.

WITCHY BOOKS

Ask Baba Yaga, Taisia Kitaiskaia

The story of Baba Yaga is one of my favorite old fairy tales. Of fucking course I want advice from the old witch who lives in a house with crow’s feet. Besides which, Ask Baba Yaga has such beautiful illustrations, which I think makes it the perfect self-help read or coffee table book.

Waking the Witch, Pam Grossman

Why do we love witches so much? For women and female-identifying people, witches have always had a big draw. Waking the Witch explores the cultural draw to witches as well as the personal fulfillment that many have found in the concepts of witchcraft. As someone who’s still waiting for my Hogwarts letter, I’ve had this book in my sights for a while.

These Witches Don’t Burn, Isabel Sterling

I recently heard about this book on the Write or Die podcast hosted by Claribel Ortega and Kat Cho when they had the author Isabel Sterling on. How could I not add it? It’s got real life witches in Salem Massachusetts, it's got scary sacrifices and blood witches, and most importantly… it’s got gay girls! Sapphic romance and witchy subplots? Let’s gooooo!

I hope you found a book (or two) on the list that inspired you to make your 2021 a little more cozy! What kinda books do you think of when you think “cozy” or “hygge”? Do you have any you’d like to add to this list? Leave a comment below! There’s always more room for another cozy read.

STAY SAFE AND BE WELL,

SHAI

Everyone has a different preference for their writing routine. Some people need complete silence. Like, noise-cancelling earbuds in a soundproof room kind of silence. Other people enjoy a little background chatter. They thrive in a cozy cafe, or listening to some white noise on their phone. Then, of course, there are the people who like to listen to music while writing.

Hi! 👋

I like to think of listening to music during my writing session as a middle ground between the first two options. All the benefits of cutting out the sound around me, but the added plus of not being left alone with just my own thoughts. When I first started listening to music while writing, I made a master playlist for all my novels, full of movie original soundtracks. Think lots of Hans Zimmer. It worked for me then. I was a teen, and I wanted everything I wrote to be “dark” and “gritty”.

But if you want to know where the money’s at, you need to make a personalized playlist for your novel.

I know what you’re thinking. “But Shai, I’m in the aforementioned ‘needs a soundproof closet to write in’ group. How is making a playlist going to benefit me?”

Whether or not you choose to listen to your novel playlist while writing is up to you. The process of creating a novel playlist on its own is one of the most insightful writing exercises you can do for your Work in Progress.

You should make a playlist for the same reason almost any accredited author suggests reading books in your genre before you start writing. Art informs art. So don’t limit yourself to purely literary sources of inspiration! Music can inform the depth and mood in your novel in ways you might not expect.

Here is how I go about creating a new novel playlist:

Add some OSTs

Turn your writing experience into a movie - inside your head! Choosing music from video game or film soundtracks is a great way to set the tone and mood of your world.

Try to think of a movie or video game that has a similar tone or premise to your WIP. When I was writing my TV pilot script for After Oil, I listened to a lot of The Last of Us. Even if you’re not a gamer, I strongly suggest listening to some video game OSTs. They tend to be better for repeated listening because they’re literally designed to be! Game music is intended to loop naturally while also fading into the background a bit, whereas film soundtracks are often written to accent a specific moment in a film. I can’t listen to Hans Zimmer without recalling bits of film dialogue as I’m listening.

If you don’t know any video games personally, try scrolling through Spotify’s “gaming” section and see what resonates with you. A quick Google search for video games in your novel’s genre is sure to get you off to a good start too.

Look for “theme” songs

I got into this practice during my good ol’ forum roleplaying days. For any who might not know, this is where a bunch of people join a thread in a forum to roleplay a story together. The thread creator writes a plot and form for people to submit their characters to participate. Then everyone takes turns submitting posts as their own characters.

A wall of text in a forum can be a little dreary and intimidating, so it was common practice for roleplays to spice up their posts with a “signature” for their character. This usually involved some badly formatted fanart lifted from Deviantart and song lyrics in fancy fonts. You know how we used to all use song lyrics as our offline messages on AIM? Yeah, like that.

As cringe as this might seem, choosing a “theme song” for your main character - or any of your characters - is an incredible insight. Lyricists communicate thoughts and feelings in a much different way than a novelist. A theme song is a great tool to finding your character’s “cornerstone”, or the thing that makes them who they are. For example, for my character Sarah in After Oil, the song “Don’t Want to Die in the Storm” by Anna & Elizabeth was the theme of her cornerstone. Sarah lost her mother at a young age, and watched her family continue to live comfortably despite their impoverished conditions during an international oil crisis. She sees this as a symptom of where she grew up, in the middle of rural America. She doesn’t want to “die in the storm” like her mother or her family. Sarah’s goal in life is to leave home.

Having a theme for each of your characters is a great thing to have in your back pocket while writing your first draft, and it’s something you can always go back to whenever you become unsure of your character’s motivations.

Create a radio

I personally like Spotify for this, but if Pandora is more your cup of tea, that will work as well. I choose Spotify because I specifically like making a radio based off a playlist I’ve created, to get a more personalized experience. But if you only have one song in mind to begin with, a song radio is perfect.

This is great to do especially if you’re at a loss for what songs to add. It’s also just a nice way to find music you might not have thought of.

I had a breakthrough the other day with my current WIP while doing this. My novel playlist for Lake Rats is made up mostly of girl in red and the Gone Home video game soundtrack. I’ve been struggling to find other music that hits the vibe I’m searching for in the same way. So I made playlist radio while I was at work.

That’s when “Sick of Losing Soulmates” by dodie came on. I already know and love this song, so I remembered the lyrics. When the chorus kicked in, I felt the pieces slide into place.

“I’m sick of losing soulmates, so where do we begin? I can finally see you’re as fucked up as me, so how do we win?”

I suddenly had a whole new perspective on my two main characters. My protagonist, Goose, is in love with her best friend Em, but she still hasn’t told her. Throughout the novel, Goose and Em investigate the death of an unknown woman they find in the lake together at their family campground. I had been so focused on Goose’s deteriorating relationship with her divorcing parents and how it affects her throughout the story, I hadn’t really stopped to think… what’s going on with Em? What’s her home life like? I don’t know of a single teenager who has a “perfect” relationship with their family. I realized I hadn’t fleshed out Em nearly as well as I thought. It’s what had been missing in the dynamic between Goose and Em, and now I finally have a handle on what I need to do to really get into the juicy bits of their relationship.

Keep an open mind and ear to new songs - you never know what the lyrics might reveal to you about your novel!

Listen.

As I said earlier, it’s up to you whether you listen to this playlist while you work on writing. Personally I often find songs with lyrics to be too distracting while writing. I just want to sing along the whole time.

If you choose not to listen while you work, make the time to listen in other ways. Play it while you’re at work (if you can). Listen while on your run or walk. Listen on your commute home. Listen while you’re in your garden. Make this a habit and you’re far more likely to have big brainstorm moments.

What songs or artists are you going to add to your playlist? Let me know in the comments below!

My Cozy Cottagecore Reading List for 2021