Let me start by saying that I’m having so much fun writing these blogs. I was already a big book nerd, making list, scouring the internet for lists of new writings that are coming out, grabbing every possible excuse to go to a bookstore.. But now that I have this monthly recommendation list, I feel like a professional book nerd. And that’s pretty much the best feeling ever. I selected four books for this blog…

Over at WOW, we know that nothing inspires writing like reading. That’s why this year, we’ll be bringing you a book review every month. Although we’re not big on calling it a review, so we went with meditation. We’re not so interested in judging the value of a piece of work. We’d much rather tell you about all the great stories that are out there.

This month Eline read Ghost Music by An Yu.

Welcome to 2023! We can’t wait to see what stories this year will bring us. What stories we will write (join us every first Sunday of the month for a writing session that will spark your creative genius here) and what stories we’ll read. Twelve brand new shiny months, that’s 53 potentially cozy Sundays to curl up with a book! This year, WOW’s Eline will recommend a few books every month. New releases, poetry, (cult) classics, indie books, books that deserve more fame… Get ready to run to the bookstore!

And all of a sudden we find ourselves in December. The dark, the cold and the holidays. Whether you like them or not, you’ll have to get through them in order to get to a new year. Our favorite part of the holiday season is gifts. We can spend hours searching for the perfect thing to give to the people we love. And a great gift is a literary gift, of course! Here are five tips to get your book bestie the perfect gift.

If we look at the way we move ourselves through the seasons, summer is typically a season of going out. Being visible, the sun warming your skin, collecting adventures. In fall, we harvest. We pick the fruits of what we sowed in spring. An abundance of apples, pears, pumpkins and if we’re lucky: stories!

Fall encourages moving inside. Literally, as it gets colder we wear more clothes and less of us is visible. Our skin is just ours again. This retreat also comes with a great opportunity to look at all that we’ve absorbed in summer. What poems showed themselves to us? What sentences appeared in our brains out of nowhere, when we were doing something completely unrelated?

Of course every season is a great season for reading, but fall just seems to be exceptionally great for reading. At WOW, we can’t wait to retreat into the wonderful world of stories as the days get shorter and the fall colors start to appear outside our windows. Get your scented candles, clear your schedule for all of October and get ready to disappear into each of these wonderful literary pieces.

1. It won’t make you a writer, but it will make you a writer

One of the hardest things about writing, besides the actual writing, is getting those words out of your mouth: ‘I am a writer.’ Of course we rationally know that a baker doesn’t have to be baking 24/7 to be allowed to call themselves a baker, so neither do you have to constantly write to be a writer. Writing doesn’t even have to pay the bills for you to be a writer. But still, there’s that voice in your head that won’t allow you to say it out loud.

Eline van Wieren is a writer from the Netherlands. A year ago, she signed with a Dutch publishing house for her debut novel. After she signed, she decided: I’ll take one year to write my first draft, another for rewrites and then my book will be ready to hit the stores. This turned out to be pretty optimistic planning. Because how do you write a book when you’re also expected to pay rent, see your friends regularly, move your body enough so it stays healthy and do all that other stuff that makes up a life? In this series of blogs Eline writes about the struggle of being a writer and a human being at the same time.