Your 'comfort' book(s)

[JaffaCake70]

Not necessarily your favourite book, but which book(s) do you go back to time and time again and never tire of?

For me it's:

To Kill A Mockingbird

Any Adrien Mole (I still laugh out loud nearly 40 years after first reading them).

1984

Sherlock Holmes short stories, Arthur Conan Doyle
Blandings and Jeeves stories, P. G. Wodehouse
Most things by Agatha Christie (actually lots of Golden Age and later 20th century British whodunnits, e.g. Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Patricia Wentworth, Michael Gilbert)
Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
South Riding, Winifred Holtby
Any Jane Austen novel - Persuasion is my favourite
More or less any novel by Evelyn Waugh (not as keen on Brideshead Revisited)
A Dance to the Music of Time, 12 novel series by Anthony Powell
Swallows and Amazons series - First read when I was 7 or 8, have re-read them all countless times, never tire of them

Rachel's holiday.
All the Cormoran Strike series

I'm also fascinated that others are so similar. Looks like the classics are a big comfort!

Anne of Green Gables 100% for me, there are a few particular books in the series that I love best for comfort reads.

Also Little Women, The Secret Garden and any Jane Austen.

And a bit more modern - I love to re-read Bridget Jones, feel like I am just sitting laughing with an old friend.

And weirdly a total go-to for re-reading and comfort is I love some memoirs by Tom Cox about life with his cats. He's written lots of more nature writing books since that he def prefers but something about the books about the cats just captures for me day to day life with pets and I like reading them.

Yes! Jilly Cooper and Shardlake for sure! And, du Maurier's The King's General and Miss Read.

Flowers in the Attic as a comfort book? I'm still traumatised by that book and I read in the mid-80s!

My comfort book is 'I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith.

I too am finding so many similarities-
my user name gives me away here
I re-read all the the Nancy Mitford's regularly-fav is Love in a Cold Climate
Anne of Green Gables
All of Jane Austen-currently Persuasion
Secret Garden/Little Princess
Noel Streatfield -esp Dancing Shoes and Ballet Shoes
Little Women

I adore re-reading books and also listen to them on audible when I walk which is such a pleasure.

There are a few on this thread I'm going back to!! Def think Rebecca!

My comfort book is 'I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith.

Oh, yes maranella, that is a wonderful book. I didn't discover it until adulthood. If I had read it as a child it would have become hardwired into me and I would have re-read it a dozen times.

The stand by Stephen King just adore the book and have read it countless times
The Hobbit, my dad read it to us as children ( and the Lord of the rings) and it reminds me of being tucked up in bed with my dad reading to me and my brother. I'm in my mid 50's and my dad died ten years ago so it's a lovely memory.

Another vote for the Anne of Green Gables series here

The Marlow books by Antonia Forest.

Jane Austen

Of Human Bondage

Anything by:
Georgette Heyer - Arabella and Cotillion especially
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Diana Wynne Jones
Mary Stewart
The Revenants by Sheri S Tepper
Seraphina by Jean Merrell

and weirdly, Food in England by Dorothy Hartley

Many of the above, plus Terry Pratchett of course!

The Go Between by L.P. Hartley

Eleanor Oliphant

I have lots that I re-read, the Twopence to Cross the Mersey books, many of Maeve Binchy’s books, and Rosamunde Pilcher too.

The Little Women series of books
Black Beauty
David Eddings' sagas
Any of the Discworld novels especially with the witches
Jilly Cooper the rutshire chronicles,
The Shopaholic books

Hitchhiker's guide and dirk gently! Always make you see the ridiculousness of everything and remind me of the 80s :)

All of Jane Austen,
Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell,
Patrick O’ Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin series,
Three Men in a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel - Jerome K Jerome,
EF Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels,
Diary of a Nobody - George and Weedon Grossmith,
The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar, Miss Pym Disposes, The Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey,
All Ngaio Marsh,
Lord Peter Wimsey novels - Dorothy L Sayers,
Brother Cadfael novels - Ellis Peters,
MV Hughes London Child series,
All MR James,
Doreen Tovey’s Cats in the Belfry series,
Antonia Forest’s Marlows novels,
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame,
All of Edith Nesbit,
The Secret Garden, A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett,
The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper,
Charlotte Sometimes - Penelope Farmer,
The Amazing Mr Blunden - Antonia Barber,
Lucy M Boston’s Green Knowe series,
All Laura Ingalls Wilder,
Tom’s Midnight Garden - Philippa Pearce,
All Diana Wynne Jones but especially Charmed Life,
The Voyage of QV66 - Penelope Lively,
Come Back Lucy - Pamela Sykes,
All Cynthia Harnett,
The Dolls’ House, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, - Rumer Godden.

Gaudy Night
Night Watch (actually, any Vimes ones)
The Long Winter
Good Omens (now on 3rd copy)

@CatChant Yes to Charmed Life!

I left out Terry Pratchett! And Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver novels.

Oh yes, Noel Streatfeild! My favourite is Party Frock. Ballet Shoes is marvellous too.

My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell.

Can't believe I missed Josephine Tey off my list of British whodunnit authors. Miss Pym Disposes is my favourite of hers, but I like them all.

Oh yes, Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes too, and The Circus is Coming, White Boots and The Growing Summer.

Mine are all children's books

Are you there god? it's me Margaret
Back home
Diceys Song

I don't think I've ever read a book in adulthood that I've loved as much as these

Discworld, Maeve Binchy, early Marian Keyes, The Dark is Rising, the pony books (Pullein-Thompsons, Patricia Leitch, Ruby Ferguson) and Chalet School stories of my youth, Ballet Shoes, Cold Comfort Farm, Harry Potter, Wolf Hall, the Rebus books of Ian Rankin.

Harry Potter still re-read them after all this time, and anything Austen