Book review: Winter, By Adam Gopnik

Forgive the Montreal-raised author's ice-hockey obsession, and this stylish and congenial set of essays will gently lead you down the frozen path towards the year's midnight.

The New Yorker stalwart braids childhood snowstorms and Romantic poetry, polar explorations and Dickensian Christmases, into a celebration of the chilly season and a study of its many moods.

Gopnik shares his appetite for every facet of the warm pleasure that cold weather can give to the alert – and well-clad – winter wanderer. Like ice wine, it consists of "sweetness made from stress".