Local Happenings

Reading Recommendations for February

By Logan Anderson (landerson14@css.edu)

February 7, 2025

     Winter in Duluth brings shortened days full of snow and frigid temperatures. While the frosted evergreens and lake ice formations are beautiful, sometimes this season feels never ending. I’ve found that the best way to deal with this is to try my best to emulate a bear in hibernation. One great way to do this is by making a hot drink, finding somewhere comfortable to sit and cuddling up with a book. I’ve thought up a few book recommendations for this month for those looking for their next read. For February, these books follow themes of love in honor of Valentine’s Day and cozy winter vibes in general.

I’ll start with a novel that I’ve read a few times, “Normal People” by Sally Rooney. I know this is a popular book and I’m sure everyone and their mother has recommended it already, but this little love story has certainly earned its praise. This is a fast read, yet the story does not feel rushed. In fact, the slow growth of the characters is a large part of what makes this book so good. 

     Sally Rooney writes with a very thought-provoking, perceptive and relatable tone. Normal People follows Connell and Marianne from the moment they meet in their last year of secondary school to their final year of university. At the beginning of this novel, the two are nearly opposites, but a gravity pulls them together. 

A warning: while this is a love story, it certainly is not a happy one. Connell and Marianne’s relationship is anything but stable, but what they experience together forever changes them. “Normal People” is a perfect novel for those who love relatable, imperfect characters and realistic stories about love and friendship. This story manages to be simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, and is a true example of the impact just one person can have on our lives. 

The next book provides an escape from the cold of Duluth and transports the reader to the warmer climate of a coastal Colombian city. “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez is certainly steamy, and is the perfect book for the hopeless romantic. I mean, imagine desperately pining after someone for over fifty years. 

That’s exactly what the protagonist Florentino Ariza does in this novel. The story follows his infatuation with Fermina Daza, a girl he falls in love with as a teenager. Their relationship begins through fleeting glances and the secret love letters, until Fermina’s father ultimately forces them apart.

Florentino does not give up on his love for Fermina, and it nearly destroys him as he engages in over 600 affairs while waiting for Fermina for over fifty years. The alluring pull of forbidden love is masterfully captured by García Márquez as Florentino unravels in his longing for Fermina.

This novel explores everything about love, especially how delusional it can make us. García Márquez writes vibrantly and poetically with his usual humor, sprinkling in bits of the magical realism he is well known for. He creates a vivid world full of interesting characters who feel real yet incredibly bizarre. This is the perfect read for someone who wants to be swept along by an epic story of eternal love and obsession, and relate to the agony of heartbreak that inevitably comes along with it. 

     My final reading recommendation for this month is for those who aren’t so much looking for the love and romance themes this February, but are instead searching for a book that leans into the cozy vibes of winter. “The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern is just about as cozy as it gets. 

This novel follows college student Zachary Ezra Rawlins as he discovers an underground world beneath our own. He meets other colorful characters along the way, and together they embark on dreamlike adventures. 

As Morgenstern weaves Zachary’s story together with the stories of others who have come before him, she creates a rich, spellbinding underground world that I’m still itching to be part of. This novel is perfect for lovers of storytelling and those who long to escape into another world. This book is not really fantasy in the traditional sense– There are no dragons or even overt magic. Yet subtly, magical, inexplicable things do happen. “The Starless Sea” is a masterpiece that straddles the line between fantasy and reality, and is utterly absorbing in all respects.