If you love hygge — the Danish practice of embracing the cold, dark winter by making it as cozy as possible — you’ll swoon over Icelanders’ blissfully simple Christmas Eve ritual: jólabókaflóð, or “Yule Book Flood,” during which family and friends exchange new books and then spend the evening reading together.

Pinch us.

To help make this Christmas Eve (or plain ol’ Tuesday) more literary, we offer for your reading pleasure:

• “51 Favorite Books of 2019”
• “The Best Book I Read All Year Was…”

(And if you need a last-minute book for a gift? We bet your local indie will have most of the titles on the lists above. Hint, hint.)

Happy holidays from the Independent, and a joyful, story-filled 2020!

[Editor’s note: A version of this piece originally ran in 2017.]

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