Did Dickens invent Christmas? It’s sometimes said he did, recreating the holiday as we know it out of the neglect that had been imposed on it by Puritanism, Utilitarianism, and the Scrooge-like forces of the Industrial Revolution.

November is the anti-April: gray and dreary, the beginning of the end of things rather than their rebirth. It’s the month you hunker down -- if you don’t give up entirely.

It’s in October that the Overlook Hotel shuts down for the season, leaving Jack Torrance alone for the winter with his family and his typewriter in 'The Shining,' and it’s in October that his son, Danny, starts saying, “Redrum.”

September is the start of many things: school, fall, football, the biggest publishing season, the return to work after the end of summer.

Put your idleness, if you're fortunate enough to have some, to good use with these suggested August readings.

June is overflowing with matrimony -- but it's also the home of another modern ritual, graduation day -- or, as it's more evocatively known, commencement, an ending that's a beginning.

Unlike the storms of March and the "uncertain glory" of April, Shakespeare's May, with its "darling buds," is always sweet, and ever the month for love.

Here is a selection of recommended April reading, heavy on birth, death, and rebirth, and a little boredom.

We don't know quite what to do with March. We're excited and frightened by its power and variability. Here is a selection of recommended reading for a moody month.

Here is a selection of recommended reading for February, full of love, birthdays, and late-winter gloom.