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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

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I don't read for comfort. K does.

And honestly, I have no idea what I do instead.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Tattered old Heinlein juvies are my top choice, followed by any book I have loved immoderately and well. "The Beginning Place," "I See By My Outfit," um.... there must be a few others. Oh, "Dreaming Jewels."

K. [though I second the vote for Jenny Cruisie. If you need something new, go there]

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Is that the LeGuin Beginning Place? Because I also loved that immoderately. Haven't got my own copy yet, though, and haven't run into anyone else who had the same reaction to it as I did.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Yes, LeGuin. Such an odd, evocative story. "I See" is Peter Beagle's road trip story and "Jewels" is a love story by Sturgeon.

Beagle, Sturgeon, Tom (not Harold) Robbins, Brautigan are those whose use of words I admire most.

K. [though "Men, Martians, and Machines" by Eric Frank Russel is another comfort book I have read endlessly]

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

That EFR book is one of the ones I've had longest; I think I owned it when I owned fewer than a dozen books, but maybe there's been more attrition of the older books than I remember. I had it with me in Switzerland in 1967, I'm pretty sure. And have read it an amazing number of times, though not recently. I think it was a comfort book for a while, before I'd heard the term.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

So when I say, "...assuming Armstrong could hold his six" you know exactly the scene I mean?

K.