Comfort reading etc.

[mrissa]

The status here, it just keeps quoing. For those of you who did not buy the souvenir scorecard, that means that the vertigo PT continues to be extremely nasty and eat much of my time and energy. Wednesday will be the fortnight mark. Two weeks of nasty was the initial estimate without the PT eval; the physical therapists said "up to a month." So it would sure be nice if we could finish up the "worse before better" segment of this program and get to the "better" part, but we're not counting on it any time soon. If you say, "How are you?" and I say, "About the same," that's not such a great thing.

But it's tolerable; we're doing our best to make it tolerable around here. My mom had a whole slew of great suggestions the first day out, about wearing soft clothing and in other ways keeping myself from being physically miserable as much as possible. I'm thinking of trying to get scones from somewhere, because breakfast is the one bit of food I can sometimes enjoy at the moment. I mean, it's me, and it's breakfast. Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of waking up too early with the sensation that I am about to fall out of bed and land on my head on the ceiling can stay this mrissa from her appointed breakfast, nor, apparently, from enjoyment of same. I have often said that breakfast is part of why I'm an optimist, because at the end of the day, no matter what it's been like, either you know you get breakfast in the morning, or if you have a bad stomach bug, you can have hopes that you will feel better enough for breakfast after some sleep. So I think maybe I could squeeze some extra joy out of breakfast with scones. We'll see; I'm not really up for making them right now, nor does a run up to Turtle Bread for their orange chocolate chip kind seem like a good use of my time and riding-in-car capabilities.

Reading Dorothy Sayers and Lois McMaster Bujold, for those segments of the day when I can read without wanting to throw up, is a very very good thing. I've talked a couple of people in the last few days who have worn out their own comfort reading, and so I thought I would suggest some of mine and see who else wanted to discuss theirs in the comments. My comfort reading walks a fine line, because much of it involves dead bodies in some way or another. It is often bloody. But it is never a depressing kind of bloody, from my perspective. The worlds my comfort reading covers are flawed and often violent, and terrible things happen to perfectly lovely people. But there are always at least some trustworthy allies; more, there are generally actual friends. When I want comfort reading, I am like Chesterton's notion of children reading fairy tales: I know there are monsters, I just want to know they can be beaten. I would be surprised if your mileage didn't vary at least a bit.

Also, long series are a plus for me in comfort reading. If I've read half a dozen of something and the need for comfort reading has passed, well and good; if it hasn't passed, all the better if there's a seventh one and possibly an eighth, just in case it's needed. Not all comfort reading fits this category, of course.

Lloyd Alexander, the Westmark trilogy. The Vesper Holly books and the Prydain books are good, don't get me wrong. But when the world is bleak and barren, nothing perks a body up like blood, love, and rhetoric of the revolutionary variety. There are barricades, people.* There are so many other good things in these books, but: barricades. The Kestrel is a book for all season. Provided that you like bloody revolution in all seasons, I mean. (See also: Teckla.)

Lois McMaster Bujold, the Vorkosigan series. Not, I think, her fantasy novels. Again, I like them. I named the dog after one. But they don't have the same appeal for snuggling into a corner of the sofa with an afghan for me.

I suspect that at some point I will try C.J. Cherryh's atevi novels for comfort reading, but I haven't yet. But the nice big mathy aliens have a very comfortable sort of feel to me.

I suspect that in the right mood, Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe's series might be comfort reading to me, but I haven't got enough of them collected to give it a try, and the silliness will almost certainly hit me wrong some of the time.

D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants, which is now being called D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths. There is still a part of me that's amazed that I'm big enough to hold this book and don't have to put it on the floor and lie down next to it to read. Men die, cattle die, even the gods themselves must one day die. Did you know that when I was small, I imagined Mimir to have my great-uncle Lloyd's voice? up there with his head in the well with Odin's eye. I never said it wasn't idiosyncratic, the set of things I find comforting.

pameladean's books except for Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. I don't know why the exception. Or rather I do: it's all the stuff in the Secret Country universe, plus Tam Lin for other reasons completely. The other reasons completely for Tam Lin: how much I loved my college years in some ways, and how exceedingly grateful I am to be out of them in others. "Wasn't that fun? and thank God it's over!" sort of thing.

dduane's Young Wizards books. Possibly the kitties as well. Haven't tried them.

Alexandre Dumas, everything with the Musketeers after The Three Musketeers itself. No, I don't know why the distinction there. I think because for all its wandering, The Three Musketeers is going where it's going somewhat more quickly, less chance to catch one's breath and have a sandwich in the middle. (I don't want a sandwich just now, but they're like train travel that way. They go with a nice sandwich, possibly with arugula.)

If Nicola Griffith would go and write two or three more of Aud's books, those might be just the extremely violent thing. So she should get on that, maybe.

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, The Fall of the Kings.

Madeleine L'Engle, the ones with Polyhymnia O'Keefe as the main character, and also Camilla.

Astrid Lindgren, The Brothers Lionheart or Ronia the Robber's Daughter.

L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle. This is specifically against the series idea, I realize, but I just can't see the Anne books in that light, and the Emily books, while I love them quite a bit better than the Anne books, are likely to make me want to throw a screaming hissy fit at appropriate moments, so: not comfort. No. (Although it's a very reliable screaming hissy fit of rather distinguished pedigree at this point; it's a screaming hissy fit that, notionally at least, has remained with me for decades, un-acted-upon, and yet present all the same. Still, even venerable conniptions are conniptions.)

Patrick O'Brian, the Aubrey and Maturin novels.

Ellis Peters, the Brother Cadfael mysteries.

I should probably try Sharon Kay Penman's first trilogy in this light and see how it goes.

Terry Pratchett, the Tiffany Aching books, and possibly the one with the (say it with me, kids!) barricades, Night Watch, I think that is.

Dorothy Sayers.

I want to say Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, for those times when you want to make your brain go clickety-whirrr, to make it stop doing whatever other thing it's doing. But that would require that your wrists be very strong and healthy, whatever else the rest of your life is up to.

Kate Wilhelm, the Constance and Charlie mysteries, but maybe the early Barbara Holloways as well, I'd have to check that.

And you?

*If you manage to figure out how to write a book with sea serpents and peasant revolutionaries at the barricades in it, prepare to have me following you around conventions beaming adoringly at you.

Comments

[fireriven.livejournal.com]

Books that have, in the past, comforted me to read:
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip
A College of Magics by Caroline Stervermer
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
(Really, pretty much anything by Neil Gaiman and any of the Discworld books with a few exceptions are comfort reading in my mind.)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, at the moment. I would elaborate, but I am having to take a muscle relaxer now to stave off the vertigo (and other symptoms) of my TMJD. :-\

I really, really hope the PT improves things for you and soon. Take care, Mris. ::hugs if you'd like them::

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Anything by Garth Nix. That I've read so far, at least.

Psalms. (Either I'm actually comforted, or I can have a cheerful round of "up yours, psalmist!")

Amelia Rules (http://www.ameliarules.com/home.html)--glorious.

Hellboy (http://www.hellboy.com/)--so ridiculously over the top, but skillfully so.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Your Amelia Rules thing crashed my browser, so apparently I am not permitted to witness the glory.

Men die, cattle die, and other things one day die too.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Lets see:
Vorkosigan books
Yendi
The Westing Game
The Pushcart War
Stephenson's Zodiac
any Calvin & Hobbes
most Pratchett but especially Small Gods
the first three Foundation books
ditto Dune
The Past Through Tomorrow The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Friday
Lawrence Block's Burglar and Tanner series
Various Mike Ford, especially Princes of the Air and The Final Reflection

I'm probably forgetting a few.

Re: Men die, cattle die, and other things one day die too.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Also Voyage of the Dawn Treador and The Silver Chair

For some reason I can't edit the previous comment even though I flunked keeping Mike's titles straight: it's actually Web of Angels I wanted there, not Princes.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Tam Lin would be one. Sunshine would be another.

The Secret Garden used to head that list, but I think nowadays it might not. Better, perhaps, to leave it as the beloved relic of my childhood, rather than seeing what new views I would form of it now.

stream of consciousness on books

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

goodness mercy i haven't heard of much of that. i agree with you on the l'engles except i hadn't heard of that character -- just the "wrinkle in time" series which must preclude the ones you're talking about. now i really want to look up the ones you read.

anne of green gables series is (was) comfort reading for me, but not emily -- she drives me nuts. of all the montgomerys, my favorites are pat of silver bush and mistress pat. the blue castle is the most disturbing one to me. :) go figure...

and recently a friend sent me "gone-away lake" and "return to gone-away." they are total comfort reading now. so is the discworld series although the only one i've read in years is "the light fantastic."

ones that used to be comforting: the little house series, chronicles of narnia, watership down/tales from watership down, stuart little and charlotte's web, island of the blue dolphins and zia, and the flame trees of thika. i wish that this whole thing hadn't ruined so many good books for me, but so be it. i'll pick them up again in a few years. right now i want to look up some of the ones you've listed (mathy aliens don't really do much for me except make me furrow my brow, though) and also find books i haven't read by authors i know were comfort reading at one time. like scott o'dell.

have you read ram song, earth song, and there's one other one, by sharon webb?

Re: stream of consciousness on books

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Polyhymnia (Poly/Polly) O'Keefe is Meg and Calvin's daughter. Starts with The Arm of the Starfish, then Dragons in the Waters and A House Like a Lotus. One can then go on to An Acceptable Time if one likes, but it's not a favorite of mine.

If you haven't read Elizabeth Enright's other series, The Saturdays and its three sequels, you might want to give them a try. There are a few things about them I find a little disturbing, but mostly they're awesome.

I haven't read the Sharon Webb books, no. What kind of books are they?

[ckd]

Yes, the Pratchett with the barricades is Night Watch.

Two of my standard comfort books are Janet Kagan's Hellspark and Mirabile, but right now I don't think they'd be as comforting.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

At least, not the same kind of comforting. Good work standing after death is comforting in a rather stern way.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

We only cross at the Bujolds and Aubrey/Maturins, so I suspect my comfort reads probably would be non-starters for you. But here are a few: first and foremost Jane Austen. When I'm done with the novels, I read the fragments, then the juvenilia, then the letters. Then I read Pelham (the 1828 edition), Madame Sevigny's Letters, and Liselotte von der Pfalz's because she's so funny and witty and wise and interesting. Then maybe Clair Clairmont's letters and diaries. Then PH Wodehouse (school stories, Bertie and Jeeves, but only those written before 1945), and, well, like that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've wanted to read Liselotte von der Pfalz but haven't managed yet.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Sherlock Holmes. I have one omnibus edition with all of it every bit plus the old set of annotations (Baring-Gould and usual suspects) and the new three-volume set of every bit of it plus the new set of annotations (Leslie Klinger). But I don't read the annotations when I'm reading for comfort. I just dive in and read "THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED" or "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of an enormous hound!" until I feel better.

-Nero Wolfe.
-I, Robot and the first Foundation book. (Not the others. The Mule annoys me and I have to skim until I get to the precocious kid, whom I rather like. But the first one is such a clean view of history in action and the effects of key individuals on it, it astonishes me.)
-Lord Peter and Harriet.
-The Blue Sword and Beauty where she didn't get the ending right and Rose Daughter where she went back years later and did get it right and also Mercedes Lackey's The Fire Rose which got it all right in the first place. These are what a friend of mine refers to as Lonely Girl Finds Her Place books, and I was a Lonely Girl, and some days I still am, so these will always comfort me.
-Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris' Adept series. On one particularly bad weekend I reread the whole set of five in a day and a half. They are purest cheese, but they are books of competent people doing competent things competently and with style, which I find consoling.
-Keith Laumer's Retief short stories, same reason. Also because they're drily funny.
-Anne McCaffrey's telepath/PTT series (The Rowan, Damia, et al) because they're about family and also the competency thing.
-Her three Killashandra Ree books too.
-Glory Road and Farmer in the Sky and Rocket Ship Galileo and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel and Starship Troopers, all of which are about competent people doing competent things. I realize some people find the last one polarizing, in which case omit it and stick with the juveniles, which deserve a better tag than "juvenile." (And besides, Galileo is so horribly dated now it's extra fun.)
I read a lot of books over and over, but these are the ones I could probably recite large chunks of back to you from memory.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Ooh ooh ooh - Timprov reminded me:
The Tattooed Potato and The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) (I'm not so big on The Westing Game, which to me is more about the puzzle than the people)

... and, while we're on THAT shelf ...

Carry On, Mr Bowditch and both McCloskey Homer Price books and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories and Doctor Dolittle and about the first six or seven Oz books.

[eposia.livejournal.com]

I now really want to write a book with both sea serpents and peasant revolutionaries at the barricades. Yeah!

It's been quite a while since I've been both sick and reading, for a variety of reasons. I remember as a kid that the requirement was basically anything big enough to keep my attention for as long as possible. Though, I don't really recommend staying awake for 22 hours straight reading the uncut version of Stephen King's The Stand when one is suffering from a 103 fever and other flu-like symptoms. Or perhaps that's the very best way to read that book...

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Having spent half of January and a portion of February having flu and then recovering from it, I can state quite firmly that P.G. Wodehouse, Georgette Heyer, Patrick O'Brian, A.M. Smith's Botswana series, and Steven Brust's Dragaera books are my top choices when I need comfort.

[pameladean]

Dorothy Sayers
Josephine Tey
Ruth Rendell's Wexford books (NOT Barbara Vine's anything)
the Nero Wolfe books
Heinlein juveniles
L.M. Montgomery, except for Kilmeny of the Orchard
Cress Delanhanty
Georgette Heyer
Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin books
the Vorkosigan series
anything by Emma Bull
Cherryh's Foreigner series (yep, big mathy aliens)
Mary Renault's contemporary romances, but not the historicals even though I love them
the Little House books
Louisa May Alcott

I should stop now.

P.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Me too, except for Nero Wolfe (does nothing for me) Cress Delahanty which I had better look for.

My other reliable ones are Anthony Price and Noel Streatfeild.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

My list changes around a lot, depending on what's handy, but the following has been historically accurate:

The linked Vorkosigan books (Shards of Honor + Barrayar, & Komarr + A Civil Campaign). I like most of the others, but they just don't do it for me the same way that those do.

Steven Brust's Khaavren books.

Guy Gavriel Kay's The Sarantine Mosaic.

The Bagthorpe books, although I don't have enough of them (need to track the rest of them down online).

Walter Jon Williams' Voice of the Whirlwind, which suggests that my idea of "comfort" is probably a little skewed.

Natsuki Takaya's Fruits Basket (all 18 volumes that are in english), and Masami Tsuda's Kare Kano (all volumes but the last few).

Oh, and Pride & Prejudice.

I re-read a bunch of other books too, but with those I skip bits. With these, I tend not to.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I needed a specific type of book rather than anything at least half an inch thick between covers. One of the weirdest moments of staying on campus before my senior year of college was coming home from the city library with three books I'd never read, lying on the bed, and realizing within ten or fifteen pages of the first one that yes, I needed this, and my brain was just uncoiling.

The last time I needed a specific type of book, I basically wanted a Lunabook: fantasy romance, nothing mindblowing, probably going to annoy me at some point. A book I could calm down with, more or less-- the authors I recommend to friends start my brain whirring, pacy-mood, where I can't sit still because suddenly my thoughts are coursing-hounds.

I read Anne Bishop's short story collection because I needed fantasy romance and familiarity. I think I might return to part of one of the stories, because it's kind of fanfic of her own world and fanfic is usually satisfying to someone, in this case me.

I read Sunshine by McKinley because I had just read Twilight by Meyer and was kind of pissed at the world, young women, and myself. I needed a vampire-related heroine who did some heroineing.

If I needed comfort reading right now, it'd be Carol Berg until I got to the fourth D'Arnath book, which I can't find, good chance at His Majesty's Dragon, pretty good with Harry Dresden. The problem is that most of my books are in boxes back with my family.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Having a long-distance relationship with one's books is hard.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Comfort reading: I'm with you on the Sayers, my number one comfort read. And with pameladean on Josephine Tey. And if Sayers works for you, how about Margery Allingham (only not Tiger in the Smoke)?

desperance swears by the Chalet School; I enjoy them, but am not greatly comforted thereby. Anything by Diana Wynne Jones, on the other hand...

The pattern here would seem to be, classic crime and children's books, though not necessarily those from my own childhood.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Diana Wynne Jones: good thought. I haven't tried Margery Allingham, but I will put her on my list to try, and maybe she will eventually work. I only read a bit of Josephine Tey once because of pameladean in the first place, but I got on fine with it and should maybe try some more.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

We overlap a fair bit. Montgomery in general works for me though TBC most of all; Sayers (The Lord Peter books, not the Monty Egg stories or Documents in the Case); Pratchett (anything with Granny Weatherwax, Tiffany Aching or Sam Vimes and also Monstrous Regiment; Duane's Young and Feline Wizards.

Also, Jane Austen; The Dark is Rising series; the Harry Potter series; Louisa May Alcott, especially the Rose book snad An Old-Fashioned Girl; E. Nesbit; Diana Wynne Jones.

I read and enjoy Aubrey and Maturin, but I don't think I go to them as comfort books.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

As mentioned above by shewhomust, desperance does indeed swear by the Chalet School (Elinor M Brent-Dyer, for the unenlightened: English girls' boarding-school stories set mostly in the Tyrol or later Switzerland: codes of honour and strict matrons and madcap adventures and every good girl gets to marry a doctor in the end, they're joyful...). And Sayers, always, and various other titles already mentioned; and Tolkien; and Modesty Blaise (the novels, not the comic strip).

PS

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*If you manage to figure out how to write a book with sea serpents and peasant revolutionaries at the barricades in it, prepare to have me following you around conventions beaming adoringly at you.

Um, as it happens...

Well, the sea serpent is a dragon, but she's a very serpentine Chinese dragon and spends the entire volume underwater; and the barricades are thrown up by the imperial soldiers in retreat from the peasant revolutionaries; but nevertheless...

[It's called Dragon in Chains, and I am editing as we speak...]

Re: PS

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

*draws "mrissa + Dragon in Chains 4EVER" in a heart in the margin of her algebra homework*

*writes "Mrs. Dragon in Chains in different handwriting in her social studies notes to see which way the capital letters would look best*

[jenett]

Comfort reading:

Sayers.

Bujold, but only if I am not desperately in need of sleep. Otherwise, there will be problems.

Brideshead Revisited, oddly enough. Early implantation in brain.

Elizabeth Peters novels (both the Amelia Peabody ones, and pretty much anything else she's written.)

James Michener novels. I'm particular fond of _The Source_ and _The Novel_, but neither of them are happy books, really.

Various school stories - Enid Blyton, the Chalet School - and also other children's books (Noel Streatfield, "Jill has a pony")

Also, a sometimes distressing amount of Mercedes Lackey.

One recent read I'd suggest, given your tastes, are Alan Gordan's Theophilus books: the first one is Thirteenth Night. Set in the late 1100s to early 1200s. Fools. Politics. Murder. Adventure. Also, you've got to admire a series that's so far taken in points in Italy, Constantinople, Germany, Denmark, and France.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you have trouble sleeping after reading Bujold novels, or do you have trouble putting them down in time to go to sleep at a reasonable hour?

[redbird]

A Wizard of Earthsea. Maybe the next two, but not the more recent Earthsea stuff, for me (though that's not disliking changes here, it's that the fourth one is very dark, and none of them are familiar the way the first three are).

[clarentine]

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, The Fall of the Kings.

Then will you please explain that one to me at some future point in time when it's not inconvenient for you? I so wanted to love it for the echoes of Swordspoint past but could not get it to make sense, and was very, very frustrated as a result.

If I'm feeling lousy and want to just sit and read, I'll take up Zelazny's Doorways in the Sand, which is my absolute favorite of all of his books, or perhaps Brust and Bull's Freedom and Necessity, whole portions of which fall open to rereading every time I touch the book, or Bear's Carnival, whose characters utterly enthrall me and whose ending had me in tears, or Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, which feels like such a trainwreck until you get fairly well into it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Why don't we try talking over The Fall of the Kings at 4th St., then?

Re: stream of consciousness on books

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Bujold--Cetaganda through A Civil Campaign, skipping Brothers in Arms and with a special focus on Memory, and Paladin of Souls and I think once the Sharing Knife series is complete that, too--all different kinds of comfort, though.

A Wrinkle in Time. I like the Polly books, but the presence of Zachary Grey in the last few makes me want to throw things. I can deal with him, kind of, in A House Like A Lotus, but that's mainly because of the fab Dr. Renny.

Occasionally Sayers, but not really--in the nearly 10 years that I've been helping to run the LordPeter list, a lot of the joy has been sucked out of them for me. Which is a shame.

Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry. Because the end is right.

Jennifer Crusie's Welcome to Temptation.

Yeats, Yeats, and more Yeats. There's something very comforting about his poetry for me.

Re: stream of consciousness on books

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I wanted Zachary Gray to drown in A House Like a Lotus. Glub, glub, gone. That was what I wanted.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

You are the only person I know who has actually read and liked Camilla or The Brother's Lionheart. I return to both these books again and again through out my life. (Also the D'Aulaires, which I make a point of giving to children in my life when they are old enough to read.)

I love Joan Aiken, particularly the Arabel & Mortimer books, though I like the Dido Twite series more and more as I get older. But I also adore her gothic suspense/romance work. That genre is especially comforting to me, which would probably explain why I spent 2006 reading the complete works of Barbara Michaels. Formulaic, perhaps, but comforting, definitely. People in peril, particularly from the people they love and trust, not to mention a definite tinge of the supernatural is comfort reading for me. (Also Mary Stewart. And Georgette Heyer, though she doesn't write gothics, I kind of wish she did.)

Moomins, particularly Moominland Midwinter, which is what I turn to when the world seems bleak. It makes the experience feel like part of a natural phenomena instead of an alien abduction.

Jules Feiffer's Man on the Ceiling.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't actually own the Moomin books. Probably I should.

What is Man on the Ceiling like?

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

It's funny seeing so many of my books show up on other lists - it has a very "my people!" feeling about it.

So:
Sayers, minus the short stories, and particularly Murder Must Advertise and Gaudy Night
L.M. Montgomery, minus the Pat books (Pat is too neurotic for me) and especially The Blue Castle and A Tangled Web and the Emily books (which I love more than the Anne books)
Elizabeth Peters' Vicky Bliss books
Jennifer Crusie's books (barring the last two, which I haven't read), especially Fast Women
John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books
Guy G. Kay's books except for Tigana, which I can't reread as often
Robin McKinley's Sunshine, plus her other books as needed
Caroline Walker Bynum's Holy Feast, Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women and Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion - two books I absorbed in order to write my MA paper and I now fangirl the author entirely
Mary Stewart, especially Airs Above the Ground and Nine Coaches Waiting

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Pat goes beyond neurotic and into batshit insane for me. It just ain't healthy to be obsessed with a HOUSE like that.

Mmmmm, Vicky Bliss. You're aware there's a new one coming out soon-ish, right?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Pretty much any Heinlein or Doc Smith, at this point (I've read the covers off so much of it I have to resort to the minor or even bad works sometimes to get my fix).

Sayers, especially Busman's Honeymoon.

Bujold, especially A Civil Campaign.

The Modesty Blaise books.

W.E.B. Griffin, especially the older ones (before he got so sloppy and disjointed). His juvenile books can be good, under a variety of names including William E. Butterworth.

The Brother Cadfael books (I'm starting to wonder if I've worn them out, I haven't been back in a while).

Niven&Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye.

Frank Herbert, Dune.

(In those last two cases, it's important to note that any hypothetical sequels that might some day be written would almost certainly not be included.)

Gaiman & Pratchett, Good Omens.

The Nero Wolf books.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I realized that I forgot Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, (although for some mysterious reason I bounce off the Secret Country books). In fact, reading about Janet's shelf of comfort reads made me squeeful.

The Dark is Rising books should be more of a comfort read for me, but I haven't returned to them recently - haven't needed that particular type of comforting, I suppose. Ditto Lord of the Rings.