Comfort Reading

[mdlbear]

A mention of a comfort novel in someone else's LJ made me think about what I read for comfort. It's an interesting question.

Over the years I've had several books I kept returning to; I'm not sure whether it's for "comfort" or just to have something familiar that suits my mood, however odd that may be.

• When I was much younger and just discovering science fiction, I must have read Andre Norton's The Stars are Ours a dozen or so times. I'm not entirely sure why. I got over it.
• In college, I always resorted to Yeats when I was feeling particularly lonely. There was a stairwell in my dorm that was particularly resonant for late-night reading out loud; I have no idea whether anyone heard me. Much later I set The Cap and Bells to music.
• Somewhere around there I read The Lord of the Rings, when it first came out in paperback, and have read it once or twice a year ever since.
• I keep coming back, every once in a while, to Shakespeare's The Tempest. OK, I'm an incurable romantic.
• But when you get down to it, I think my all-time favorite author for "comfort" reading is Cordwainer Smith. Norstrillia, "The Lady Who Sailed The Soul", "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", and especially "The Dead Lady of Clown Town". Others, too, but those are my favorites.

Excuse me, it's been a little too long since the last time I read "The Dead Lady of Clown Town". I have to go now...

Comments

[telynor.livejournal.com]

The comfort novel I was talking about was Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time, a book I first read when I was ten and come back to time and time again. I love juvenile and YA literature in general, so many of my "comfort" authors are from that field.

Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones are other examples of authors I read when I want literary comfort food. Connie Willis is in there somewhere, too; I love to re-read Bellwether on a long, lonely night. And there are a lot of those here in Georgia right now.