Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks about our top ten list of cozy, wintry reads. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to focus my list on Christmas reads. (Readergirl3 also narrowed her topic similarly and we have a bunch of the same books in her list.)

Here are 11 of my favorites (once I got going, I ran long…)

1. Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales beautifully captures the nostalgia surrounding the holidays. If you can find the audio of Thomas reading it himself, it’s worth a listen. Similarly a staged reading of the text also makes for an enjoyable evening.
2. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. Also has, as I recall, a decent 1980s made-for-tv adaptation.
3. The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggins: An overly melodramatic Christmas picture book about a sick girl and her neighbors from the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
4. The Polar Express, a picture book by Chris Van Allsburg, tells of a boy’s test of his faith. I first read this in French in high school, and it’s a beautiful read-aloud in any language.
5. My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins, gives you a dozen YA love stories in a range of genres from some of the top authors writing for teens today. Not all 12 stories were loved, but I could appreciate even the ones I didn’t.
6. Speaking of which, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! gives you three interrelated Christmas stories from John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson.
7. For many years, I did not enjoy Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but for the past decade or so, I’ve finally grown into it. I’m currently waiting on an audio version read by Jim Dale from the library.
8. Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas is the source material for the original cartoon and the subsequent movies and may be one of the few times in history where the book and the adaptation are equally good.
9. It’s been nearly a decade since I read Connie Willis’ Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, but I’d totally read the sci-fi Christmas-themed collection of stories again (or, at least, most of them).
10. A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg gives you everything you expect from a Flagg novel — lots of laughter, Southern charm, and quirky characters. I don’t know if Southerners enjoy her writing, but this Northerner sure does.
11. Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, is a sweet YA romance set in New York City and features one of my favorite grandfather characters in recent memory. Plus, it told me that I could find copies of the OED at The Strand if I were willing to shell out for one.

How about you? What’s on your list of cozy, wintry reads?