Let's Get Cozy
A cozier cairn for spooky season, because the world is spooky enough.
My seven year old is a rule follower. This doesn’t mean that he listens to his mother and does everything I say; but it does mean that for every single day of September he crushes my dreams by telling me that no, I can’t put up our Halloween decorations yet because it is “not even October”.
While the adult version of me adores celebrating spooky season, I was never really a big Halloween kid. I rarely dressed in costume and only trick-or-treated two or three times. As an immigrant (Mom) and a child of immigrants (Dad), neither of my parents grew up with the culture of trick-or-treating. Accordingly, any costume I wanted to wear had to be foraged and forged together from available parts found around the house.
One year I found a small unused rubber garbage can in my parent’s garage that my dad helped me cut head and arm holes out of. With some help from my mom and some old red and white spray paint, voilà: I was a can of soup.
It was really only when I had children of my own that I thoroughly embraced the season. I save and display every child-made preschool Halloween craft each year to the point of disintegration. I fill my home with as many Halloween gnomes and colorful pumpkins and smiling skeletons as possible. And my incredibly lucky children reap the rewards of having a thrifty costume-assembling mother who insists on even partially hand-making their costumes in spite of having little-to-no actual crafting skills.
When my son was a garden gnome at 5 months, I was a flower pot and my husband a mushroom (costumes where crafted hats did most of the heavy lifting). When he was a dragon at 2 1/2, I turned my husband into a jar of extra spicy salsa via a red t-shirt, and constructed a taco costume out of cardboard and construction paper for my verygoodsport of a brother-in-law. (Dragons, after all, love tacos.) Last year my little family of four dressed up as makeshift Ninja turtles and ate pizza before trick-or-treating long past bedtime, and my son—a boy notoriously afraid of the dark and talking to strangers and just generally being outside—announced on the return home “this is the best night of my life.”
October may be spooky season, and there is definitely a strong love for spooky when it comes to my reading choices; but it also marks the beginning of cozy season. It is the time of year when I delight in turning on the fireplace more, shaking out my cozy wool sweaters and pulling the soft blankets out of the closet. I ooo and ahhhh and bookmark delicious-looking squash-based soups on Instagram that I never get around to actually making and targeted ads on social media make their inevitable Autumnal shift from (and I wish I was joking when I tell you this) moisture wicking menopause base layers (hate crime?) to ghost-shaped throw pillows and wine glasses with skeleton-hand stems.
When putting together this week’s cairn, I tried to capture this feeling of coziness in both books and TV shows. So if horror and jump-scares aren’t for you, I hope there’s something here you might like.
May the rest of your October be filled with warmth, coziness and a little bit of magic,
Courtney x
Cozy Books for Spooky Season
For readers who might enjoy romance with a touch of the supernatural this October, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna and The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston are great choices. The first is about a witch hired to tutor three young witches at Nowhere House, a magical manor with a colorful cast of characters—including a curmudgeonly but sexy librarian. The latter is the story of Florence Day, a ghostwriter who encounters a surprising (and handsome) ghost who helps break her writer’s block.
If cozy murder mysteries are more your vibe…
Richard Osman, author of the beloved Thursday Murder Club series, has a new action-packed romp called We Solve Murders. The book follows Amy the bodyguard, Steve, her private investigator father-in-law, and Rosie, the rich, sassy American novelist Amy has been hired to protect. Influencers keep showing up dead and someone is very clearly trying to frame Amy. This book is funny, propulsive, and a decent web to untangle.
Death At The Sign of the Rook is the sixth book in Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series. Stranded in a snowstorm at a country estate, former detective-turned-private-investigator Jackson Brodie is investigating a very real crime against the insufferable backdrop of a very unreal, poorly acted murder mystery dinner. I have personally found the Brodie books to be a bit inconsistent, but I loved this one. Kate Atkinson’s writing and character-building really shine here. I recommend it for Agatha Christie fans.
My absolute favorite read this month has been Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. Vera is an elderly Chinese woman who runs a tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown. One day, she opens the shop and finds a dead body. Disappointed and frustrated by the lackluster police investigation, Vera decides to investigate the crime herself only to end up making a family out of her growing list of suspects. Perfect for people who love stories about nosy-older women-turned-amateur sleuths, found family, restorative justice and delicious sounding home cooked Asian meals, this book is truly, truly delightful.
Cozy-ish TV for Spooky Season
Two Halloween-themed shows I highly recommend for comedy fans are Los Espookys and What We Do In the Shadows. Los Espookys is for absurdists and comedy nerds, a show about a group of friends that turn their love for horror and b-rated film special-effects into a business, staging eerie and bizarre events for clients. Primarily a Spanish-language show, this one is perfect for anyone who loves big-hearted weirdos and absurd antics as well Julio Torres’ comedy and Fred Armison’s awkward humor (Torres and Armison are two of three co-creators of the show.)
What We Do In the Shadows is a hilarious mockumentary-style show that, stylistically similar to The Office and Parks and Recreation, has a camera-crew following and interviewing a group of vampires and their oft-maligned human familiar in Staten Island. There are absolutely no weak links in this ensemble cast, and the show only gets stronger and funnier as it goes on.
Only Murders In the Building is quintessentially cozy to me. For lovers of true crime podcasts and intergenerational friendships, this show follows the story of three residents of The Arconia, a Manhattan apartment building. When a body is found in the building, the trio find themselves podcasting by day and amateur sleuthing by night.
The last two shows are both dramas and are both detective procedurals based on the books of Ann Cleeves. As a lifelong fan of British murder mysteries and detective shows, I find the quirky, straight talking, no-nonsense, hard-on-their-team detective with a bit of a drinking problem is almost always a man. And yet, here is Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope from Northumberland. She may call you “Pet” as a term of endearment, but don’t mistake her informality for patience.
Shetland is based in the small archipelago off the coast of Scotland with the same name and has a surprising amount of crime for such a small and serene-looking place. DI Jimmy Perez and his team are on the case in this slower-paced, beautifully-shot show.
