A Comfort Reads List

When I feel sick or sad or overwhelmed, I instinctively reach for either my well-worn paperback copy of CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader or the comforting sounds of Jim Dale reading JK Rowling’s Harry Potter. Those are my very favorite books, and the ones I’ve re-read the most.

When I read the sentence “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” or “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” I know that I am in good hands. (Seriously, doesn’t reading that just make you want to drop everything you are doing, abandon this post, and go read those books? It makes me want to do that!)

As 2020 stretches on, I am finding that it is a season in which I am reaching for comfort reads. At the start of all things COVID-19 I was just starting to read Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow for my new book club, a book picked on March 8th for our meeting in April, which of course didn’t happen. I loved the other books I had read in the series. At the time, I didn’t think I should suggest intentionally picking a comfort read to help calm my mind, but I’m so glad that was what was in my earbuds in March and April. It was a respite amid such a strange season.

In contrast, at the start of the year I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which at the time I found to be very well-written and thought provoking, but a little too intense for me. With its post-apocalyptic setting of 99.99% of the world wiped out from an influenza pandemic, Station Eleven is not what I would consider a comfort read, and I’m particularly grateful that I’m not reading it now, although it’s definitely stayed with me.

(I’m sure some people wouldn’t mind picking Station Eleven up now. It certainly makes a compelling case for how much worse it could be. Everyone has their own definition of what is comforting.)

For me, I think a comfort read combines the elements of the familiar, the encouraging, and the hopeful.

Re-reading a familiar beloved story, or reading a new story in a favorite author’s series, brings you back to the feeling of safety and stability. In a season where it’s hard to know what to expect the next few days to bring, it’s a comfort to go into a book where you do know what to expect.

Reading something encouraging might mean reading something lighthearted and funny, or it might mean something in which evil is conquered and truth and goodness triumph in the end because brave people act.

I think, basically, I want a comedy, in the sense of a happy ending where bravery wins, or in the sense of laughter in the face of absurdity. I want a book that leaves me joyful and hopeful.

A comfort read is like the best comfort food: familiar and nourishing. It’s different than junk food or guilty pleasure because it has substance to it. But it’s also not having dinner at the all raw-vegan-health-food-vegetable-fusion restaurant (and whatever literary equivalent of important, but difficult to digest, new and edgy reading is). For me, it’s the literary equivalent of breakfast for dinner: warm and easy and good.

Re-reading is also an act of deliberate rest: like a nap in the middle of the day or a Sunday afternoon off. I have a long list of books I’d like to read, and as a child of the 90s Book-It Pizza Hut program, I feel a sense of productivity finishing a new book.Then I blog about it, and put it on my list of books I’ve read that year, or talk to someone about it at a party (ok the playground, I’m not really going to parties). But re-reading is a kind of rest that eschews even that “productive leisure.” I am reading for the simple joy of it, because I love the book and want to feel its love wash over me again. Or as CS Lewis wrote to a friend, “I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” ( C.S. Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greeves (February 1932) )

I almost always will reach for a novel, rather than non-fiction, to re-read, so that’s what I’ve listed below. A version of this post had over 50 books with a good deal of non-fiction sprinkled in, because I have a hard time leaving out good literary friends. But my husband Evan convinced me to keep it shorter, so if you want to see the whole list, I’ve created a new page called “Amy’s Favorite Books” and you can see it there. And I got Evan to give me his top comfort reads as well.

As we are turning the corner in the middle of summer, and see that the Fall is going to likely be more of the same morass of difficult decisions and soldiering on in the face small and large inconveniences and significant trials, I hope having a list of a few of my favorite books might inspire you to make your own list to turn to in times of need, or to discover a few new favorites.

Amy’s Comfort Reads

My Husband Evan’s List:

1. Very Good Jeeves by PG Wodehouse (and any in that series)
2. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (and any other Tolkien)
3. Father Brown by GK Chesterton
4. Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

What are books on your comfort reads list?