Comfort reads

[sartorias]

Now that summer is here, I thought it a perfect time to talk about comfort reads.

Comments

A Taxonomy of Comfort Books, Part I

[rachelmanija]

I think of comfort reads in two categories:

1. Cozy reads: books where nothing really bad happens, that are comforting for that exact reason. Usually, they have good to excellent prose and lots of atmospheric descriptions of pretty places and good food.

Nonfiction is often good for this. I am especially fond of books which describe the Indian or English countryside, and books about food, cooking, and food and cooking in times gone by. A few of my favorites along those lines: England in Particular: A Celebration of the Commonplace, the Local, the Vernacular and the Distinctive

Re: A Taxonomy of Comfort Books, Part I

[asakiyume]

Your category of secret gardens is one that I've loved from the first time I heard you explain it. The Peacock Garden is on my to-read list.

Re: A Taxonomy of Comfort Books, Part I

[asakiyume]

And Dragonsong I loved for the animal companion aspect. LOVED. I drew pictures of Menolly and her nine fire lizards all the time. And I just recently added The Changeling Sea to my to-read list.

Part II

[rachelmanija]

2. Comfort reads. These are books in which bad stuff does happen, but the story is about how the hero triumphs over adversity and/or finds emotional healing. I go to these for a different sort of comfort: not to imagine a perfect place where nothing bad can happen, but to be convinced that bad things can be overcome. These have to be fairly emotionally realistic, or they don't work for me, and the bad stuff has to be fairly serious.

My favorites in those lines are most of the Vorkosigan series, but especially Mirror Dance, Borders of Infinity, and Komarr, Robin McKinley's Deerskin

Re: Part II

[sartorias]

I like these distinctions. (Your part two are my rereads, but not comfort books. But I know that that would be different for another reader.)

Part III: Comfort Reds, continued (LJ made me break this up)

[rachelmanija]

I notice that the Part II books are all fantasy or sf; mainstream novels along those lines tend to conclude with a more subdued note of "hope and healing might be possible, but don't expect too much." That's fine for what it is, but not sufficiently comforting for me.

Those books also can't be, as lionpyh once described the Lymond series, "1,495 pages of hurt and 2 pages of comfort." I do enjoy that sort of thing in the right mood, but that would be category 2b, I guess, "wallow in someone else's delicious angst." In that case, I'm enjoying not identifying with the hero, as I identify with Lissar or Mark, but rather taking pleasure in how much worse things could actually be: my life might suck, but at least I'm not suffering from opium withdrawal andmigraines and temporary blindness and grief and guilt and PTSD and will never be able to play chess again!

Re: Part III: Comfort Reds, continued (LJ made me break this up)

[sartorias]

Heh! I never think of the Lymond books as comfort books, but I bet somebody does!

[pameladean]

I do because they are absorbing. There are a lot of circumstances they do not work for, but for my mere internal angst about my writing career they are just fine.

P.

[sartorias]

Oh, that makes sense.

[anna_wing]

I like the distinction between cozy and comfort reads. It does capture the two important elements in the whole experience very well, and the point that non-fiction is also a viable source of comfort is well-made. A new book in a familiar genre (say, natural history or palaeontology or food anthropology or gardening) can be just as useful for this purpose as an old favourite. For me the important thing is that it should be relatively impersonal. I am profoundly uninterested in wallowing in the psyche of any individual. Tell me about horticultural practices in 19th century Swabia or the different evolution of flight capability in pterosaurs and bats instead!

[sartorias]

Oh, so true. My particular ones are books about art.

[asakiyume]

Commenting here instead of there because my remark is somewhat irrelevant to the topic, consisting of just, I don't have comfort reads anymore, because I don't read for comfort anymore, really. All my reading is either utilitarian in some way (research) or else gemlike moments of pleasure, in which I'm looking for new things.

... I've come to realize that I'm not as much of a reader as some people. It's hard to admit, as books and their world are so important to me, but I have to acknowledge the truth! It reminds me of when I used to do the summer reading program. There were kids whose lists of books read was longer than my arm, and I always admired and was a bit jealous of them. Mine was long, but not that long.

[asakiyume]

I do sometimes read scenes from books for comfort. Those books are the Narnia series, A Wind in the Door, A Ring of Endless Light, The Bronze Bow, and The Rope Trick... and I read them for existential or spiritual comfort.

[sartorias]

I do that, too.

[sartorias]

I think it's safe to say that the comfort many seek on the printed page you find out in the woods, in the air, listening to the sky, and the water, and the birds.