Your Comfort Books

[LitNetIsGreat]

In times of great stress and anxiety, like say going back to work after a holiday – I do not want to talk about it – I often turn to certain books (as well as music and beer) for comfort and consolation. Some of these for me would include:

Keats – in order to rise above all the nonsense with his sheer perfection.
Paradise Lost – bits at random, just to get overpowered with the verse so that I forget about stuff.
Buddhist stuff – if I am feeling that way inclined, like say the Dharmmapada, though rarely recently.
Shelley – Just to lose myself in the rhythm of the verse and not really take any of it in.

Other stuff would include random bits of prose from various writers, anything that flows, though it seems that I turn to verse for comfort over prose?

Right now it is bath time with Keats, then a little Don Giovanni and a couple of good cold beers. :rolleyes:

Anyway, anyone for comfort books?



Splash...

[jadrianne]

Baudelaire -Les Fleurs du mal - anytime

[Lulim]

Middlemarch -- after having lost home, family and job, it is great to have something that feels like being at home

[Emil Miller]

I would always turn to music first because it begins where words end, but in terms of near perfect prose writing it has to be The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald.

[Lokasenna]

I'll always turn to the major Romantics, Emily Dickinson, John Donne or any of Shakespeare's or Marlowe's plays...

It's wonderful just to flick to a random page and start reading and absorbing...

[*Classic*Charm*]

A little bit of Shakespeare before bed at night. The cadence of iambic pentameter is very soothing.

[Satan]

E. M. Cioran's aphorisms. It may sound unusual, but his pessimism makes me feel better about my own life. Henry Miller has the same effect on me. Catullus' poems. Nabokov's lyrical prose. Shakespeare's sonnets. Poem in verse, like Eugine Onegin or Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate.

[Barbarous]

There is defintely a handful of prose and poetry I often turn to in times of anxiety as well. Mainly, Joyce's Ulysses (the comfort of knowing my banality is not the most intricate), Borges' short stories and the few Shakespearian sonnets I have memorized I am wont to quote in boring or tense situations.

[Bastable]

Not that i want anyone to think i'm a Kerouac groupie or anything, but my comfort books are:

On The Road - Kerouac's enthusiasm, love for life, love of love, and his honesty warm my heart every time.

Windblown World - This is just a collection of Kerouac's journals, to my knowledge the only collection of his journals in print. It may sound trite, but i really relate to Kerouac, and reading something as intimate as his journals heightens that, because i can see myself writing the things he writes.

For some reason no other writer has been able to give me as much "comfort" as Jack Kerouac.

[JuniperWoolf]

I'm pretty earthy.

The Grapes of Wrath
stuff by London
The Secret Garden
Watership Down
Wind in the Willows (especially the one where Pan rescues the otter's kid)
Swamp Thing
other Steinbeck (except Of Mice And Men, which stresses me out more)

It helps to be outside while I'm reading, too.

[janesmith]

In times of personal stress I re-read Great War poetry because it never fails to put into perspective just how trivial my 'problems' seem in comparison. It never fails to amaze me just how strong the human survival instinct can be.

[Aravona]

Mine are childhood ones, winnie the pooh (oh yes!) a book very old, the glue dried out funny and the pages fell out and at the age of 7 I lovingly taped them all back in and taped up the spine, I showed my mother (whose book it was) and although devastated it fell apart very proud I'd fixed it. I'd always have that book around.

The other series I read when I need comforting, is Artemis Fowl. Can't help it I always fall back on a kids book when I need to.

[Niamh]

Persuasion by Jane Austen would pobably be my comfort book. :nod:

[Kafka's Crow]

John Donne, always John Donne. Returned last Saturday from a week-long holiday in Pembrokeshire (South-west Wales) and I was really depressed so started reading PG Wodehouse. What a way to escape into a past of good-old fashioned English humour at its utmost best.

[Katy North]

The Wizard of Oz, Dr. Doolittle, and The Chronicles of Narnia for me.

Sometimes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, to remind myself that life is absurd.

Sometimes The Great Gatsby.

Other times just losing myself in any book is what I need.

[applepie]

I would have to say almost any of Shakepeare's comidies. They are what I turn to when I really just need to relax and zone out for a bit, along with a nice glass of wine that is :)

Other than that, I tend to pick up just mass market fiction (the kind you'll find in the book section at Wal Mart) if I really just need to decompress my brain. I read literature to think and expand my mind, but sometimes a simply written, uncomplicated, major theme free book is just what the doctor ordered.

[The Comedian]

My comfort books:

Walden --it always peacefully and playfully reminds me to find the grand in the small, that there is is joy and magnanimity in this moment happening right now. Reading Walden is like cleaning my glasses that I didn't know were spotted and dirty. . . .

The great Wordsworth poems, but especially "Tintern Abbey" and "Intimations of Immortality"

Another poem: "Birches" by Robert Frost.

Still with the nature theme: I'll read nature essays by Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, Loren Eisley, Annie Dillard. . .

[LitNetIsGreat]

Oh some good ones. Me too for bits of Shakespeare as well. I love "Tintern Abbey" also, (my favourite Wordsworth) but tend to turn to him and the innocent nature that he brings during the summer holidays instead.

[Stendhal]

I haven't reread anything recently, but Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen has gotten me through some tough times. Also, Don Quixote is pretty much the book that holds almost every knowable answer in life. Most 19th century lit helps me too.

[Wilde woman]

When I need a good cry, I always turn to Cyrano de Bergerac.

For a laugh, I open up a David Sedaris.

Otherwise, I find comfort in my childhood favorites. The Once and Future King, the Little Prince, or the short stories of Oscar Wilde.

[sadparadise]

I enjoy the tranquility of Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac, and Walden by Thoreau. The hopelessness of the Road by Cormac Mc Carthy never hurts.

[Alexander III]

I have to say my comfort books are:

A selections of Rimbaud's poesy
A selection of Shelley's poesy
On The Road
and lastly Dorian Gray, yes I know that may sound weird as a comfort book but the beautiful prose manages to soothe.

[mtpspur]

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini is probably the book I have reread the oftenest. Certain portions more then others. Grimjack and Jonah Hex comics have a curious soothing effect as these are the sort of magazines that MUST rely on plot and character. The Bible of course when I really need a boost.

[Selfsame]

Leaves of Grass, Emerson's Essays, Paradise Lost. I've been searching for anything that might give me the strength to carry on w/ the day lately, and these are the closest I've come.

[Cailin]

Though I mostly read prose, it's actually poetry that I turn to for comfort - the Romantics, Dryden (!) or Yeats or Heaney...

My comfort novel is Jane Eyre - a childhood favourite

[L.M. The Third]

I love "Tintern Abbey" also, (my favourite Wordsworth) but tend to turn to him and the innocent nature that he brings during the summer holidays instead.
With spring here I'm feeling like taking Wordsworth with me for every outing into nature.

I think I like novels best for comfort, and even more specifically novels by women. Jane Austen, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell. And, yes, the book Jane Eyre.

Poetry? My brain is dead right now, but relatively easy for comfort. Most certainly Milton's sonnet On His Blindness.

[Jeremydav]

Annnnyyythiing by Kafka. I have to admit, though he isn't my favorite author, he's my go-to.

[MrRegular]

Anton LeVay's the Satanic Bible is a great one to cuddle up with on a rainy day
-or-
Mein Kampf by... I forget who
-oh, yeah and-
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a real tear jerker at times.
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