What are your comfort reads - books that you can read over and over again?

To kill a mockingbird
The red tent
Jane Eyre
The time traveller's wife
A prayer for Owen Meany

For utter comfort reads Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer depending on how ill I am feeling (GH if I can't focus straight) And lots of Ursula le Guin, especially the Dispossessed (hence Takver . . .)

Ooh you're all so literary. I like a good thriller myself! Tess Gerritsen, Ruth Rendell, Nikki French.....I must admit I love Jane Austen too - and Nancy Mitford (and have read several biographies of the Mitford Girls- they all lived (mostly) such fascinating lives). Can't do Terry Pratchett at all - or Lord of the Rings - in fact anything with elves/fairies/made up creatures - I much prefer a bit of mass murder/forensic science along with autobiographies and history....The Godfather is probably my favourite book. Though remember staying up all night to read the Thorn Birds as a teenager - with much weeping! And mentions of the Chalet School - god I loved those....haven't got them any more, maybe DD is getting nearly big enough to reorder some from Amazon.....

oh forgot PG Wodehouse.

Pigeon Pie - I was reading The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club last night too! Finished it this morning.

My comfort list:
Dorothy L Sayers
Michael Gilbert
Terry Pratchett
PG Wodehouse
Antonia Forest
Monica Edwards
Forsyte Saga
To Kill a Mockingbird
Cold Comfort Farm
Samuel Pepys diary

Interesting how the same ones keep coming upover & over.

Just William

yup, terry Pratchett books (especuially the Witches ones and the Wee Free Men ones)

Precious Bane - Mary Webb

Jude The Obscure - Thos Hardy (actually, any Thos Hardy)

Any Margaret Atwood

Gone With The Wind

Any Barbara Vine

Jane Austen's Emma

Jilly Cooper - especially Polo

the Silver Brumby books

Rebecca
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre

Also Bill Bryson's books about Europe and Britain when I need cheering up.

Josephine Tey! How could I have forgotten her!

And Emily books. And Rosemary Sutcliff.

Perhaps we are all the same person ...

Marina, we must be the same person.
I love the Anne books too, and the Emily books.
Jane Austen gets read every year
Trollope - Barchester and Palliser and some of the standalone books too.
Dorothy Sayers
Angela Thirkell
Georgette Heyer
Robert Graves
Rosemary Sutcliff
Josephine Tey
Anya Seton
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' Morland series.

Gerald Durrell - My Family and Other Animals
Elizabeth George Speare - The Witch of Blackbird Pond
LM Montgomery - the Anne books
all from childhood

My favourite adult comfort reads are:

Anya Seton - Katherine
Mary McCarthy - The Group
Robert Graves - I Claudius & Claudius the God
Gillian Bradshaw - The Beacon at Alexandria
Georges Perec - La Vie Mode d'Emploi
Francis Iles - Malice Aforethought
Dorothy L Sayers - the Vane/Wimsey mysteries and Murder Must Advertise
Josephine Tey - The Daughter of Time

Barchester Chronicles

Yet another vote for Georgette Heyer and Terry Pratchett. and Cranford, which I have read at least once a year for 25 years - and it still makes me cry.

"Dick Francis - any of them really because they are all the same book"

Totally agree. All the main charcters are almost identical. I love the one where he has loads of siblings (Hot Money?) and Proof.

yes Oranges... and White teeth

Yes, to Nancy Mitford. Another vote for Jane Austen.

And Georgette Heyer, and Dorothy L Sayers (I think I can recite Gaudy Night).

Children's books I can always reread - Anne of Green Gables, Sue Barton , Noel Streatfeild, and many many others. In fact, children's literature is my main source of comfort reading.

Dick Francis - any of them really because they are all the same book.

Le Carre, especially The Little Drummer Girl.

I have just looked at my bookshelf and almost all my books have been read more than once, and some a shocking number of times. It's wrong to get rid of a book just because you have read it. Unless of course it is deeply crap.

Oranges are not the only fruit

escapist, non threatening comfort read- no 1 lady's detective agency series.

all patrick white- esp the solid mandala

god of small things

ditto dickens.

Harpo- I suppose for me comfort reading has to be completely non threatening. For instance I recently read A thousand splendid suns and throughly enjoyed reading it but wont be in any rush to read it again. Ditto time traveller's wife, we need to talk about kevin etc etc I want others to read them and come talk to me about them and I will keep my copy of them, but it will be a long long time before I go to pick them up again. WHen I was younger preprachett days I liked Isabella Allende House of Spirits and Like water for chocolate etc so maybe I just need comfort books to be surreal enough that I can detach emotionally and not be left sobbing (after DH found me with W N TO T about Kevin, in bits, he just kept saying WHY would you read this? Why?)

This is the one I read, when I need to stop feeling sorry for myself.

Diana's Story.

Synopsis
In 1971, Deric Longden's wife Diana fell ill with the mysterious disorder known as ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis). She was unable to move without a wheelchair, and was in almost constant pain. Equally distressing, perhaps, was the fact that every doctor she saw was unable to diagnose what was wrong with her. Deric, devoting more and more time to looking after Diana, watched his business gradually fail, and had to neglect his developing career as a broadcaster. He became house husband, nurse and caretaker of the women he loved. "Diana's Story" is told by a writer who can transform the bleakest moment with his warmth and wit. It is an extraordinary funny account of a marriage based on love and on an exceptional sense of humour.

Ah! Forgot! Anything by Dickens. Brilliant, esp Bleak House.