What's your favorite "comfort book?"

[Roxanne Appleby]

When your morale and energy are sagging, and you just want to curl up on the sofa with your blankie and some cookies and an old friend of a book, which book would you choose? This is different from your "stranded on a desert island" book.

I'll start: This is not definitive, but one that comes to mind for me is Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love."

 

[Guest]

mental candy such as anything labeled "chick lit"
gone with the wind
fluffy happy books.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

"Star Wars" books.

Yeah, I know. CD=Geek.

But they are a fun read, light, easy and I can burn thru one in an afternoon.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

A few old freinds

Waterhsip Down by richard Adams
Bolo by Keith Laumer
Armor by, darmned if I can remeber his name
Lythande by darned if i can remebner her name
tolkien
towland's seminal work on the rise and fall of the Japanese empire
The skyliners, lnley on the mountain, the mountain men, treasuremountain and any of the other Saketts titles by Louis Lamour

 

[Guest]

"Star Wars" books.

Yeah, I know. CD=Geek.

But they are a fun read, light, easy and I can burn thru one in an afternoon.

youre my favorite geeky duck
waaaaaay geeky
but if it makes you quack, im all for it.

 

[carsonshepherd]

The Skating Gander , Alice Cooper Bailey, 1927.

It was my grandmother's. I wish you could all see it. Beautiful illustrated children's story of a Dutch girl who owns a goose, famous throughout Holland for its tiny ice skates. One of her friends is a poor but proud boy who runs away from home just as the gander gets lost. He ends up in Amsterdam as an artist's apprentice and finds the gander, who has been stolen away by a circus, and triumphantly brings it back home to the girl.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Ok it sounds bizarre, but anything by Stephen King.

Also, strangely, adolescent books I read as a kid that just no one would know... one called Waiting Games, another called The Cheerleader... and my secret guilty pleasure, still even today, the Anne of Green Gables series... and even Little House on the Prairie...

I'm so embarrassed...

 

[zeb1094]

Time Enough for Love is good but,

To Sail Beyond the Sunset or The Number of the Beast by Heinlein.
Any of the Dragonrider series by Anne McCaffrey.
Most any book by David Drake or Keith Laumer.


(I've got to dig out my paperbacks in the attic)

 

[Guest]

Beauty by Robin McKinley
A whole raft of Georgette Heyer books, in particular The Grand Sophie and Frederica
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I think I re-read it once a year)
Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin always restores my faith in love
Any of the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Forerunner Foray by Andre Norton (the first SF book I read as a kid)
Any of the Star Trek novelizations by James Blish
The Pern books, especially the first two of the Harper Hall trilogy

In fact, I can pretty much stay in my house and find a comfy book to read

 

[FallingToFly]

Louis L'amour - Down the Long Hills

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

"Star Wars" books.

Yeah, I know. CD=Geek.

But they are a fun read, light, easy and I can burn thru one in an afternoon.

Is that a Star Fleet tunic "you" are wearing in your signature?

Live long and prosper!



Showing my age: I bought, read and loved the first Star Wars novel when it hit the drug store paperback rack six months before the movie came out, before anyone had heard of it.

 

[Tom Collins]

When your morale and energy are sagging, and you just want to curl up on the sofa with your blankie and some cookies and an old friend of a book, which book would you choose? This is different from your "stranded on a desert island" book.

I'll start: This is not definitive, but one that comes to mind for me is Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love."

Ok it sounds bizarre, but anything by Stephen King.

Also, strangely, adolescent books I read as a kid that just no one would know... one called Waiting Games, another called The Cheerleader... and my secret guilty pleasure, still even today, the Anne of Green Gables series... and even Little House on the Prairie...

I'm so embarrassed...

I've read "Time Enough for Love" and "Anne of Green Gables" as many times as I've read the "Earth's Children" series by Jean M. Auel. You know the books I mean, "Clan of the Cave Bear", "The Vally of Horses", etc...

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Time Enough for Love is good but,

To Sail Beyond the Sunset or The Number of the Beast by Heinlein.
Any of the Dragonrider series by Anne McCaffrey.
Most any book by David Drake or Keith Laumer.


(I've got to dig out my paperbacks in the attic)

Oh gosh, I had forgotten about "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" - a beautiful, touching "going away present" for Heinlein fans. Thanks for the reminder.

This reminds me of another touching novel with a female protagonist of similarly sterling character: "The Course of Honour" by Lindsey Davis.

from the Author's web site:

" A tantalising half-sentence in Suetonius' biography says that after his wife died, Vespasian 'took up again with Caenis, his former mistress and one of Antonia's freedwomen and secretaries, who remained his wife in all but name even when he became Emperor'.

" To a would-be romantic novelist struggling to find an original setting, this was the archetypal secretary-to-boardroom plot -- a true story, with a decent hero, not to mention a heroine who must have had a sterling character. The political events familiar from 'I, Claudius' are viewed from a close vantage point, but without the traditional male, aristocratic bias which some people even today try to impose on all things classical. A love story in which young lovers come together a second time in their middle age would be highly unusual at any period."

And this reminds me of another wonderful female protagonist, 'Mary Russel' in "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" by Laurie King.

Amazon, From Publishers Weekly:
"Sherlock Holmes takes on a young, female apprentice in this delightful and well-wrought addition to the master detective's casework. In the early years of WW I, 15-year-old American Mary Russell encounters Holmes, retired in Sussex Downs where Conan Doyle left him raising bees. Mary, an orphan rebelling against her guardian aunt's strictures, impresses the sleuth with her intelligence and acumen. Holmes initiates her into the mysteries of detection, allowing her to participate in a few cases when she comes home from her studies at Oxford. The collaboration is ignited by the kidnapping in Wales of Jessica Simpson, daughter of an American senator. The sleuthing duo find signs of the hand of a master criminal, and after Russell rescues the child, attempts are made on their lives (and on Watson's), with evidence piling up that the master criminal is out to get Holmes and all he holds dear. King ( A Grave Talent ) has created a fitting partner for the Great Detective: a quirky, intelligent woman who can hold her own with a man renowned for his contempt for other people's thought processes."

Spoiler Alert!

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I won't tell all, but subsequent sequels the words "May-December" are relevent.

 

[cleverdevils_kitten]

Watership Down. Yes, the one about rabbits. Every job interview, doctor's office visit, airplane trip, rainy weekend, or any time I just get bored, Watership comes out. I'm on my fifth copy, read it at least three hundred times since I first found it in third grade. Great book!

Beowulf's one of my 2nd favorites. If I can't find the bunnies, death will do!

 

[alice_underneath]

When your morale and energy are sagging, and you just want to curl up on the sofa with your blankie and some cookies and an old friend of a book, which book would you choose?

If I need comfort, inspiration, or just to escape reality for a little while, my choice will nearly always be Tolkien. I even have specific passages that I go to, depending on my need.

For example, if I need strength.......

~~~~~

"Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye."

A sword rang as it was drawn. "Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may."

"Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!"

Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel.

"But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him."


The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien

 

[Huckleman2000]

This is sooo pathetic and embarrassing:

The Noonday Demon [An Atlas of Depression]
or
Listening to Prozac.

Reading those just makes me feel not quite so fucked up.
And I can start in the middle.

 

[AppleBiter]

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger. It's my absolute favorite book in the entire world. No matter how many times I read it, it never gets old and I love it more each time I read it.

 

[amicus]

Ah, Roxanne, Zeb1094, Tom Collins, kindred souls perhaps with Heinlein, McCaffery and Jean Auel.

I would also add all the novels of Nevil Shute Norway and the South African, Wilbur Smith, 20 plus novels by each; many months of excellent fiction in store for you if you are not familiar with them.

amicus....

 

[togitc]

Dead Witch Walking~ Kim Harrison

 

[*Twisted*]

Interesting Thread

I was kind of surprised to see that so far I haven't seen much that I haven't already read.
I do find the interest in Heinlien and Lamour surprising. I've read all those over and over for years, and find both authors to provide great comfort reads.

Couple of my other Favs.

Older Robert B. Parker
Elvis Cole series by Robert Crais (again preferably the older ones I hate his gf)
Anything by Carl Hiassen.
anything by Charles Delint
Anything by Christofer Moore
War for the Oaks by Emma Bull (obscure but worth a read)

 

[Stella_Omega]

Comfort books, yes!
I have a collection of children's classics that work for me-
"Rootabaga Stories"
"The Secret Garden"
Many books by Runer Godden- both children and adult
Likewise by Elanor Farjeon
"The Wind In The Willows" and two sequels written by someone eles; "The Willows In Winter" and The Willlows And Beyond" I'm too lazy to go find them to note the author.
Shel Silverstien's poetry books "Where The Sidewalk Ends" "The Light In The Attic"
And All of the Doctor Seuss books, but particularly "The Sneeches And Other Stories"

 

[elsol]

Any romance novel by Jayne Krentz... but "Absolutely Positively" most of all... I consider that to be the epidemy of the romance novel as a genre.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[matriarch]

.......
A whole raft of Georgette Heyer books, in particular The Grand Sophie and Frederica
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I think I re-read it once a year)
.............
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

At last!
Another Georgette Heyer fan. I adore her books, and like you will stretch out on the couch and read the whole darn lot....The Tollgate.....The Talisman....Frederica - definitely.....

For me, also add the whole Agatha Christie series......thanks to Ogg and his shop clear out, I have almost all of them, as well as the Georgette Hayers.

And my final option is the Miss Read (pseud. Dora Jessie Saint) series chronocling life in the two South-Downs English villages of Thrush Green and Fairacre, and all the characters contained in those two places. I love them, and will read them over and over again.

 

[impressive]

The Pern books, especially the first two of the Harper Hall trilogy

Yeah. Those'd be at the top of my list, too.

If I'm not in the mood to fall too deeply into a story, though, I'll grab a silly Xanth book.

 

[chris 44]

Ah, Roxanne, Zeb1094, Tom Collins, kindred souls perhaps with Heinlein, McCaffery and Jean Auel.

I would also add all the novels of Nevil Shute Norway and the South African, Wilbur Smith, 20 plus novels by each; many months of excellent fiction in store for you if you are not familiar with them.

amicus....

A truly unique day !!!
A day I thought would never dawn !!!
A day I agree with Amicus, we have similar tastes in reading my friend.
But my favourite 'comfort' book would be Joanne Harris - Blackberry Wine. It's the subject matter I guess, lonely Yorkshire writer seeks inspiration in isolated French farmhouse, but finds love instead.
I'm just a romantic at heart.