“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
It’s happy and lovely and funny and at the end of the book very nearly everything is right in their world.
Anything by L. Frank Baum.
This thread made me realize that virtually ALL of my reading is “comfort entertainment literature”.
I’m currently re-reading a number of books that were comfort food in the past.
I just checked my satchel: I’m carrying around a Hardy Boys book, the last two Animorphs, A Horse And His Boy*, and some Silver-Age Superman comics.
So, am I barely fending off depression with these hard-bound talismans? Or just keeping in touch with my innocent side?
And what do cute girls think when they see me in the window of a coffee joint with The Secret Of The Old Mill?
*Y’all are right. Not enough Reepicheep…
Three authors I read over and over again are Lois McMaster Bujold, Kim Newman, and S.M. Stirling. I can’t point to any specific attribute of their work except that I can enjoy reading the same book as much the tenth time as I did the first.
Another vote for the Dresden Files, although I do have two specific books I like to turn to: Summer Knight and Dead Beat, because there is just some supreme badassery happening in both, as well as significant developments in the overall story.
For ultra comfort, I have the audiobooks for Redwall and Mossflower. It’s actually kind of weird to call these comfort books, as I’ve come to find the writing childish and annoying. But the voices. I love listening to Brian Jacques narrate and his son Marc Jacques play Matthias and Martin, with their Liverpool accents. The entire cast is brilliant, and I sometimes tune out the words and just listen to their voices. I know that’s not exactly the same as comfort literature, but even so. For the same reason, I also enjoy the audiobook of The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde, although that does have wonderful writing in addition to the excellent reader.
Though I haven’t read it in a while, I often like to return to The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. I’ve been following the Wheel of Time series for so long, and TEotW is so tightly written compared to the rest of the series, that it’s just enjoyable to return to that setting with those characters in that time.
Lastly, also, any Discworld book, but most specifically Night Watch or Jingo. Both are fantastically written epic stories that feature my favorite character Vimes.
Oh, I hadn’t thought of comfort audiobooks, but when I think about it… When I can’t get back to sleep in the middle of the night, it’s often because I’m stressing about something.
And I found a relaxant better than any scrip. It’s a playlist on my iPod, just for times like this:
George Guidell reading any of “The Cat Who…” books.
Frank Muller reading… well, anything. Usually The Great Gatsby.
W is for Whatever Kinsey Milhone book I’m re-listening to, read by Judy Kaye.
And if those don’t work, Dean Koontz’s 2/3 of a Trilogy: Fear Nothing and Seize The Night. Hauntingly read by Keith Szarabajka.
Keep in mind, this list is biased against perectly good audiobooks (Meltzer, Gaiman, Francis, Evanovitch) where the reader suddenly yells, undoing all that good nodding-off work.
Hm, comfort audiobooks, you say? I guess I’d have to add The Lord of the Rings, as narrated by Robert Inglis. I just love his voice!
The goddamn Belgariad (and Malloreon, AND the two Sparhawk series - but not Althalus, Polgara, Belgarath, or that final, awful unreadable piece of shit series), and fuck me for it. I have such a love/hate relationship with those miserable, rotten Eddingses.
Total hack crap writers, but damn it, when I’m down and miserable, out come the Eddings books, and suddenly I’m in 7th grade again, thinking this stuff is AWESOME.
Damn you, David Eddings. Damn you for being the one I really glommed onto at an early age.
The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay - I’ve got a soft spot for coming of age stories.
Grocery store novels I would have to go with Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. Plain old butt kicking.
The books I’m ashamed to admit I love would be the William Johnstone books. Really terrible cheesy cowboy stories, the good guy always wins and saves the day, and sometime that’s what I need.
Discworld. The worse it is going the more of them I read. If I’ve reread every book onr after another then I know I’m in a bad place. It is like Eric (my least fav and read last)is my rock-bottom. I read them because the are familiar and comfortable and, of course, funny.
I also go for Calvin and Hobbes or Get Fuzzy. In fact my response to getting let go from a job for the first time was to go by a Get Fuzzy book and sit up all night reading it. It just helps to forget myself and laugh.
Jabberwocky is one of my go-to pieces. And it’s great because so long as I have access to the internet, I can find it.
For longer items, Cordelia’s Honor (which is actually two novels), by Lois McMaster Bujold, and… well, which one specifically depends on the mood and on which ones I have at hand, there’s several Discworld books. There’s a fragment of THUD! which I’m horribly allergic to, it makes my eyes water something nasty, but that means it’s great for getting over a funk; others (and most of them involve either Granny or Vimes) work for other moods.
Same here. I don’t often laugh at books, but I’ve read this countless times and it always cheers me up, especially the hangover chapter and the lecture scene.
Why, hello there ! My name is Kobal and I’m a really suspicious bastard. Small world.
The other books I read time and again are David Eddings’ *Elenium *trilogy. Because Aphrael kicks all kinds of teensy weensy cutesy loveable insolent arse, and because I believe everyone should look up what the heck a lochaber axe is once in a while. Then forget about it. To a smaller extent, the Belgariad/Malloreon as well, but when I re-read those I sort of notice what clichéd shlock they really are from time to time. The Elenium comes with its own proprietary cloud of obscuring nostalgia 
Oh, I almost forgot Cyrano de Bergerac. Shame on me - read it a million times, went and saw it in theatres a million more. Because knowing the bastards will grind you down in the end is all the more reason to go down fighting. C’est bien plus beau lorsque c’est inutile !
Re: Reepicheep’s absence from H&HB…
Maybe. But H&HB has the best line of dialogue in the series, when Corin is telling Shasta about his adventures in the Calormene capital city.
“I was walking along and a boy made a beastly joke about Queen Susan, so I knocked him down. He ran off running and came back with his big brother, so I knocked the big brother down. Then they both ran off and came back with three men called the Watch, and I fought them and they knocked me down. Then the Watch took me off to lock me up, and along the way we passed a tavern, and I asked them if they were thirsty and they said yes, so we went inside and I bought them some stinky liquor and they fell down all by themselves. Then I left to come back here, but along the way I ran into the boy who started the whole mess, so I locked him down again.”
If you want specific and not just “My Foxtrot or Pearls before Swine Collections”, I’d say the one book I used to read once a year whenever I was in a dark funk- it would be "Have a Nice Day: A tale of Blood and Sweatsocks" by Mick Foley. I read that book as a teenager when I was in a really dark place, and it really inspired me- just the way he wrote and told stories. I loved it, and always sort of used that as an inspiration for me, as a heavy-set kid back then to realize that even if life had obstacles in front of me, one could overcome it with hard work, perseverance, and a good warped sense of humor. I still love that book, though I have not had to turn to it in a while, it’s still always on my shelf and I keep it around just because of what it meant to me at that point in my life.
Encyclopedia of Country Living: A Recipe Book by Carla Emery has gotten me through many a dark night of the soul, and dark days as well. A compendium of living-off-the-land advice, from how and where to buy the land, what crops to plant, what animals to raise, and just about everything else you could possibly imagine involving living on a farm. How to butcher a hog, what to do with all those eggs, planting and drying herbs, making cheese, fruit leather, harvesting honey…you name it, it’s in there. I like to browse through it, it’s so big there’s always something I haven’t read.
A Christmas Carol by Dickens. It’s short so I can read it pretty quickly, it centers around Christmas (which just thinking about makes me feel warm and fuzzy), and it has a truly happy ending. I can relate to the story of feeling closed-off from everyone else, and the way Scrooge transitions from a cynical SOB to a genuinely good-hearted person who recognizes the importance of loving and being loved by others is really satisfying. I also love how once Scrooge mends his ways, the people who once feared him come to accept and cherish him. The underlying message is that it’s never too late to change.
+1. Well, just the Belgariad and Malloreon. Including all of the embarrassment. I’m not sure how these books earned this place in my mind, but when I’m feeling crappy, all I want to do is have some tea and read the Belgariad for the seventieth time. :smack: