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[mrissa]

What are your favorite comfort reads? Which books do you reach for when you're sad or harried or upset? And why? Or don't you read that way, and what do you do instead?

Comments

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

• Gillian Bradshaw: Beacon at Alexandria; lately added Wolf Hunt to the roster
  
• Sherwood Smith: Crown Duel (and Court Duel too, back when there were 2 books)
  
• Robin McKinley: The Blue Sword; Beauty; The Hero and the Crown; Rose Daughter; and depending on the kind of comfort I'm seeking, sometimes Deerskin.
  
• Cynthia Voigt: Jackaroo. I reread the rest of the series fairly often, but they aren't comfort books.
  
• Jane Austen: Persuasion
  
• Anne McCaffrey: The Mark of Merlin
  

I found fairly recently that some old comfort reads just don't do it anymore, like most of the rest of Anne McCaffrey... and plenty of other things I'm sort of ashamed to admit to. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Never be ashamed to admit to books! Even bad books have their purpose.

Re: shame

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

No, sorry, really. Mercedes Lackey is nothing for me to be proud of. :) Because, you see, I didn't think they were bad. And that's just lack of judgment. And hence, shame.

Re: shame

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, I read Mercedes Lackeys when I was a kid and didn't think they were bad, and I wouldn't say I'm proud of it, but I'm not ashamed, either. They were the right books at the time, and I think I learned from them.

Timprov has a theory that it's easier to learn from someone who is near your own level of writing than from someone a million miles better than you (or worse, but no one usually makes that claim). So I think I first learned about how to construct a plot, characters, etc., and then learned how not to, from some Mercedes Lackey books.

Re: shame

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Well... that's fair. But I was attempting to adapt Arrows of the Queen to the stage at one point.

I mean, I'm knee-deep in shame here. :)

Re: shame

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Timprov's right. It's much easier to learn what not to do from seeing someone else blunder into your same mistakes, than to learn what to do by reading the good stuff.

Re: shame

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Timprov has a theory that it's easier to learn from someone who is near your own level of writing than from someone a million miles better than you (or worse, but no one usually makes that claim).

Oh, yes! That's a good theory. I think you probably learn a lot from reading those far ahead of you, but it's a different sort of learning, where the good stuff sneaks into your brain and maybe later you'll be able to process it. Whereas the near-own-level sorts you can maybe consciously figure out what they're doing and how and why.

Lackey books are a fuzzy memory for me. A pleasant fuzzy memory, though.