Come with your broken dreams and your ruined fancies

[sovay]

I dreamed last night that I asked for comfort reading recommendations and came away from the bookstore with a recently reprinted YA novel about a crew of downed airmen raising a baby in a German POW camp in World War II (a childhood favorite of several people in the dream) and a relatively new lesbian mermaid romance with a gorgeous tropical cover (almost certainly influenced by this gifset and photoset). I was looking forward to reading both of them and was somewhat put out when instead I was woken by Harvard Vanguard calling to remind me of a doctor's appointment tomorrow at nine in the morning.

Now I'm just curious. What do people read when they want comfort reading? I re-read Strong Poison (1930) right before the 'Thon and am three-quarters of the way through Have His Carcase (1932), which very possibly counts.

Comments

[yhlee]

I read Margaret Weis.

Although I also think of John Barnes' Kaleidoscope Century as comfort reading, perhaps because it agrees so thoroughly with my view of humanity.

[heavenscalyx]

The Peter-Harriet books are some of my favorite brain candy. Though when I really want thumbsucking, I go for Shirley Jackson's Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. I also resort to graphic novels—Linda Medley's Castle Waiting is a good one, though I will also go to old superhero stuff and cheesy manga.

[skygiants]

Diana Wynne Jones, ever and always. And sometimes Georgette Heyer if what I really want is enormous fluff.

[umadoshi]

I think that gifset broke me. In a good way. *_*

Mira Grant's Newsflesh books are the closest thing I have to comfort reading (possibly closest I've ever come to having it), which is a bit disconcerting given how many heartrending things happen to characters I love that much.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons, Jack Womack's Dryco books, and in more recent years, Peter Watts' Blindsight: it seems that reassurance that it's possible to do certain things with words is significantly more comforting to me than positive emotional tones, as none of those books are exactly cuddly.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Sayers is certainly my ultimate comfort read.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Those both sound like real comfort reads, assuming the WWII novel ends happily.

My comfort reads: Komarr and other Vorkosigan books (but that one especially), Gaudy Night, some of Suzanne Brockmann's Navy SEALs books, Barbara Hambly's less-grim fantasies. I seem to be comforted by stories with action, romance between people who respect and like each other, and emotional difficulties overcome.

[arthur-l.livejournal.com]

I suspect that, for most americans now, comfort reading is facebook and reddit

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

alot of times it depends on the mood, I have so many choices.. or just by author at times. Or what is accessible. If all else fails, there is the Sherlock Holmes omnibus.

[pameladean]

Sayers is right up there for me; also L.M. Montgomery, Amanda Cross, Nevada Barr, Rex Stout, Lois Bujold, and Jane Austen. Also Middlemarch. And Madeleine L'Engle, with a few that I skip. And The Lord of the Rings if it's been long enough since I read it last, which very frequently it has not. Also Caroline Stevermer and Emma Bull; and Ursula Le Guin's essays on writing.

I keep needing to add new ones as the old ones threaten to wear out and need to be retired for a year or two.

P.

[selidor]

Kage Baker. Certain Le Guin, mostly one of the short story collections. Certain Bujold, Vorkosigan ones. Denise Levertov's poetry. Banks, Iain M. rather than Iain. Early McKillip if I need something ornate. Some Swanwick. Robert L Forward's Dragon's Egg (these things are not rational). Brin's Uplift books used to be on that list but I suspect I might get grumpy with them now. Cordwainer Smith.

[pameladean]

Oh, yes indeed, I should have added McKillip's first few books and also a vast deal of Robin McKinley to my list.

And no, these things certainly are not rational.

It's sad when things fall off your comfort list, for whatever reason.

P.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

*blushes and stares resolutely at the floor* On the subject of comfort reading, I've worn out two copies of Tam Lin and am working on a third.

*deep breath*

Right. To those, I'd add several books by L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott, Emma Bull's Finder and War For The Oaks, and about half of the Discworld series.

On the other hand, I also have a small stack of books (most of the complete works of William Gibson, The Dubious Hills, and L'Engle's A Severed Wasp) which I turn to specifically when I want to become un comfortable in a particular way that I can't really explain. The example that comes immediately to mind is that I always pack my copy of Gibson's Pattern Recognition when I'm traveling, and inevitably re-read it in airports.

[pameladean]

Thank you; that is one of my favorite things to hear about any of my books. And there, now we are both embarrassed, so maybe it will cancel out.

Alcott has been on my comfort list and will be on it again, but I'm having to give her a rest at the moment, except for Little Men. When I was about eight, my mother gave me her childhood hardcover set of Alcott, but she was missing that one, and I didn't start reading it for about ten more years, so it has less wear on it.

I'm fascinated that you have discomfort reading too, or stirring-up reading, or whatever one might call it. The Dubious Hills was exceedingly uncomfortable to write, so I'm not surprised it is on that list. And I certainly see why A Severed Wasp is there. I sometimes reread only portions of it if I have read all my other L'Engle.

I've never been able to get on with Gibson's work, but maybe I should give it another go.

P.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Yes, Sayers counts. I reread and reread Tamora Pierce, or my favorite bits of O'Brian or 1632.

without looking at anyone else's

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary.
A Brother's Price by Wen Spencer.
The Harper Hall trilogy.
A College of Magics.
Tamora Pierce.
Sharon Shinn's Fortune and Fate.
Some other things I'm not thinking of and will smack my head over momentarily I'm sure.

RE: without looking at anyone else's

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Yes to Komarr and yes Robin McKinley!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

My instant headcanon on the POW story is to make one of the twelve a certain college friend of my parents, who was a fighter pilot and a POW in Stalag Luft 1. He was a very nice man who did in fact (with his wife) later adopt two babies (twins, a boy and a girl, whom they named after my parents).

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

My father was a baby in a German POW camp. Well, I think he would have been somewhere between 14 and 18 months when he (along with his mother and sisters) were taken prisoner, and I do frequently hear kids of that age referred to as babies.

[ron_newman]

If you can't read those two books, you'll just have to write them.

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Yes, please!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth Enright. Elizabeth Goudge. Georgette Heyer. Diane Duane. The criticism of Le Guin, Russ, Delany, and Angela Carter. C.S. Lewis. Madeleine L'Engle. The various books of my childhood.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

My comfort reading is Howard Schwartz anthologies (particularly Elijah's Violin and I'm currently working my way through Tree of Souls), fairy tales and fairy tale theory, literature and theater and movie biographies, the giant cross-over fanfic that akawil got me into when we were first dating.

From the novel end, Mirable and Hellspark, Carter Beats the Devil, All Star Superman (not technically a novel), The Velveteen stories, Tam Lin, The Child Garden, The Westing Game, The Last Unicorn, A Deepness in the Sky, A Fire Upon the Deep, A College of Magics, most L'Engle books, but not House Like a Lotus, and there are probably quite a lot more that I'm not thinking of, because it's nearly one a.m., and I have to get on a conference call in an hour, because my job.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

The same books, over and over again. The Flat Earth series, by Tanith Lee. "The Hollow Land" by William Morris. Baltimore by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. Nine Princes In Amber by Roger Zelazny. I remember a bad night when I read and reread the scenes with Corwin rotting in jail having lost everything including his eyes. I can't call it anything but comfort reading, and it certainly made me feel a lot better, but I accept that I may require different things of my comfort reads than other people do.

Dorothy L. Sayers makes perfect sense to me. I can go back and back to her books and get a little something different every time. A comfort read seems to need to be repeatable and complicated.

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

I invariably read Good Omens or poetry by the small handful of poets (out of a wide, wide sea of them) I love best (Louise Glück, Patience Agbabi, poems by friends, medieval pieces I know like the backs of my hands, etc.)

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Mary Renault, for my sins.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

You know, weirdly enough, probably those John Bellairs books I was talking about on my LJ--the three first Lewis Barnaveldts--plus the Chronicles of Narnia (though I could read those in my sleep, by now), and the three Tanith Lee novellas I discovered in the library one time when I was in Australia: East of Midnight, The Winter Players, Companions on the Road. "...and this made him shrink in an absolute horror, for she was undead, and could not be reasoned with anymore." Also M.R. James, obviously.

[vr-trakowski.livejournal.com]

Lois McMaster Bujold, Grace Livingston Hill (selected books, some are stinkers), my childhood issues of Cricket, and oddly enough Nora Roberts' Bride Quartet, which is nearly completely opposite to my own values but is nevertheless entertaining on some level.

I adore Diane Duane and all her works, but they are more stimulating than soothing, somehow.