Curated by staff, and our wonderful patrons! This will be an ongoing resource, and updated with further titles as we discover them.
Suggestions? Visit and tell us your favorite reads that “feel like spring” on our form at the front desk! Or, plant the titles in our Facebook comment section.
*Available at Fluvanna Free Library
*The Scent of Water (1963), Elizabeth Goudge
For fifty-year-old Mary Lindsay, the sudden death of a long-lost friend brings with it the news that she has inherited a property: The Laurels, a crumbling cottage in England’s idyllic countryside. Mary renounces her London lifestyle to take up residence at The Laurels, where she finds not solely a home, but a shifting identity, and unexpected, unpredictable love.
*The Enchanted April (1922), Elizabeth von Arnim
Four women—each seeking escape from her own disappointments—pool their money and go “all out” for a group vacation: no less than to a remote castle in Italy (discovered by chance in a newspaper ad, rentable for a month). The women come from starkly opposed social circles and economic means—in fact, a pair of them had made trip plans already, and only invited the other two to spare their own bank accounts.
But through living together, dining together, in the heady and sunlit refuge of an Italian spring, each member of the group grows from tolerating the others’ eccentricities, to forming deep and loyal companionships. As a notoriously snooty tenant of the castle admits, “I’m fonder of one of them than I’ve ever been of anybody.”
Yes, I admit enthusiasm about this one. Von Arnim’s grande dame of its genre (now reductively termed “chick lit”) is ideally read in its natural element. The introduction to its 2015 Penguin Classics edition advises, “Open a window. Or better, wander into a garden. Find a chaise, settle down, breathe in the scent. . . . especially deep if there’s wisteria in the air.” This delicately purple flower—with an alternate, charmingly archaic spelling— figures eminently at the castle.
As of writing this book list, I have a borrowed copy in my lap, waiting for me to pause my compilation. I have no garden, nor is there any closely available wisteria—outside it’s still March, and about forty degrees Fahrenheit. But I do have windows, and plastic foliage I bought this morning at an estate sale. Also sunscreen, and a broad-brimmed, floppy hat. So I’ll soak up the living room sunshine, and put on my hat, and—in the independent spirit of Von Arnim’s crew—I certainly shall wear sunscreen indoors if I bloody well please!
