We all have “comfort food”—foods that either evoke our childhoods or special happy times in our lives or just make us feel safe and comforted. One of mine is popcorn—every Friday night was popcorn night at our house when I was growing up, and I still have and use the pan my father used to pop his corn. He would make two pans’ worth, put it in a big roaster with butter and salt, and give each of us a little dish-full of our own. The dishes were green Melmac. Heaven!
Comfort food isn’t something we eat every day, or even necessarily our favorite food. It’s just—well—comforting. Comfort reading is much the same. My favorite sort of reading is a big, thick, richly-textured serious historical novel, with lots of detail about another place and time. But my comfort reading is E.F. Benson’s deliciously witty Lucia novels.
I love Lucia (Mrs. Emmeline Lucas to the uninitiated), her aide-de-camp in the culture wars Georgie Pillson, her great rival Miss Elizabeth Mapp and her lesser adversary Mrs. Daisy Quantock. I can read straight through all six Lucia novels and then go back and start again from the beginning. Bliss! Why do they soothe my soul so deeply? I’m not sure. English society was certainly undergoing enormous upheaval in the period between the two world wars, but in backwater villages like Riseholme and Tilling, order remained. It is that sense of order and place that I love. There was a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do. It had nothing to do with morality. It was about behavior. I think it’s the same craving for order that leads me to read old etiquette books with such nostalgic delight.
What is your comfort reading? How does it differ from your favorite books?
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My comfort reading is any of Barbara Hambly’s fantasy novels, Betsy and Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, and Charles de Lint books.
Betsy and Tacy! Yes! I’m not familiar with Charles de Lint, and so will look him up. I like Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series very much, but then I lived in New Orleans when I was young and foolish, and revel in her detail of the nineteenth-century French Quarter.
Charles de Lint is *marvelous*! Hey, Dana — another link! Even better is when you can enjoy him and MaryAnn playing. We were all guests at the Harry Potter conference in Salem a couple of years ago. Sheer delight.
Hello again, Elizabeth!
Hmmm — comfort reading? Vonnegut. Yeah. Austen, Gaskell, Collins — big 19th C novels. That’s comfort food.
*Mind boggles a little at the thought of Vonnegut being comforting.* Heh. To each of us our very own.
Kate! It’s so good to connect with you again. I’ll email you to catch up in more details.
My comfort reading is madeline l’engle and shannon hale. They pull you into a world of their own and they are 2 of my favorite authors!!!!
hey libby this is a really fancy shmancy web site i love the layout!
Love you!!
Hi, Bella! I’m so glad you came over to comment! It is pretty fancy-schmancy, isn’t it? Heh. I like it.
Just wait until you have a chance to read Catherine Knutsson’s The Shadows Cast by Stars. I don’t think it has a publication date yet, but it’s coming out from Simon & Schuster/Atheneum in a year or so, so watch this space. Oh, and you might also like Evernight and Stargazer by another of my agent-mates, Claudia Gray. They will definitely carry you away to a different world.
Love you too, sweetie!