Ah loneliness, the winter companion, sister to solitude. While for the latter, aloneness is a comfort; for the former, it is an aching gap. This distinction is not always clear in the literature, first and foremost because individuals tend to fear solitude so very much, convinced wholeheartedly that it is a sign of defect. But taking pleasure in solitude is a tremendous feat of mental fortitude and character, realised best by Thoreau. There are of course many, many others that I’ve no doubt forgotten, but as the winter approaches (soon, soon!), settle in for the long sleep with any of the following:

• The Outsider, Albert Camus
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto, Anneli Rufus
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
• Wittgenstein’s Mistress, David Markson
• Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Practice of the Wild, Gary Snyder
• The Solitude of Thomas Cave, Georgina Harding
• The Solitude of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich
• Walden, Henry Thoreau
• Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
• Towards Another Summer, Janet Frame
• Good Morning, Midnight, Jean Rhys
• How to Be Alone, Jonathan Franzen
• Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden
• Hunger, Knut Hamsun
• Journal of a Solitude, May Sorton
• The Hours, Michael Cunningham
• The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Olivia Laing
• Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, Susan Sontag
• Consolations of the Forest, Sylvain Tesson
• The Last Day of a Condemned Man, Victor Hugo