Escaping

When January creeps in and the stress and joy of the holidays and the excitement of the new year is settling into endless cold, dreary days of mid-winter, the need to escape becomes overwhelming. Unfortunately my bank account never agrees with my drop everything and run away attitude, so I settle for escaping into my library. This time of year my escapes are set in England, heavy on poetic language and beautiful landscapes, and involve sweeping, tragic romances (it's a curious preference as I usually prefer my own real life romances to be simple and straight forward).

Spring is for laying in the grass, flipping through Coleridge and Keats. Summer is for all the YA lit I'm not embarrassed to admit I love. Fall is for the non-fiction that brings back academic memories. But winter is for gorgeous long winded books that fill the long, dark nights.

Some of my favorites: Possession by AS Byatt, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore, Rebecca by Daphne DeMaurier, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (But honestly, pretty much anything from the Bronte sister's oeuvre fits in this category)

Where do you let your mind wander when you need to escape?