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# Five books for a long winter
- URL: https://proza.site/five-books-for-a-long-winter/
- Published: 2025-12-10T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-14T10:49:32.000Z
- Description: Old, unhurried books, all of them free to read.
- Author: Daniël van der Winden
- Tags: Reading

Winter reading should be long and unhurried, the kind of book you can put down for a week and pick up again without losing anything. These five are all old enough to be in the public domain, which means they are free to read online, and each of them rewards the slow approach.

## Montaigne, *Essays*

The book that invented the essay, written by a man who retired to a tower full of books and spent twenty years trying to describe himself honestly. Open it anywhere. Read one chapter. Put it down.

[Essays of Michel de MontaigneThe complete essays in Charles Cotton’s translation, from the sixteenth century’s most companionable mind.![](https://www.gutenberg.org/gutenberg/favicon.ico)Project GutenbergMichel de Montaigne](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3600?ref=proza.site)

## Thoreau, *Walden*

Two years in a cabin by a pond, told with more humour than its reputation suggests. The chapter on reading is the best argument for slow books I know.

[Walden, and On the Duty of Civil DisobedienceAn account of simple living by a pond in Massachusetts, and the essay that followed it.![](https://www.gutenberg.org/gutenberg/favicon.ico)Project GutenbergHenry David Thoreau](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/205?ref=proza.site)

## Sterne, *Tristram Shandy*

A novel in which the narrator is not born until the third volume. Digressive, ridiculous, and much more modern than anything written since.

[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, GentlemanThe great comic novel of digression, in which very little happens at great length.![](https://www.gutenberg.org/gutenberg/favicon.ico)Project GutenbergLaurence Sterne](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1079?ref=proza.site)

## Emerson, *Essays: First Series*

Dense, aphoristic and best taken a paragraph at a time. Underline freely.

[Essays — First SeriesSelf-reliance, compensation, friendship and the over-soul, in twelve essays.![](https://www.gutenberg.org/gutenberg/favicon.ico)Project GutenbergRalph Waldo Emerson](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2944?ref=proza.site)

## Austen, *Pride and Prejudice*

Because everyone deserves to reread it once a decade, and winter is when.

[Pride and PrejudiceA novel of manners, misjudgement and one very famous first sentence.![](https://www.gutenberg.org/gutenberg/favicon.ico)Project GutenbergJane Austen](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342?ref=proza.site)