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

[harpomarx]

You know, those books that you have been reading for years, have old dog-eared copies of and will pick up when there is nothing new that takes your fancy.

Mine are:

Almost anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but especially The Beautiful and Damned.

Betty MacDonald - The Egg and I etc

Nancy Mitford Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate etc

J. D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye

Cold Comfort Farm

I like anything by Joanne Harris.
Captain correlis mandolin ( de bernieres)
Forever Amber (Kathleen Windsor)
Mortal sin
Harry potter

Nobody has mentioned Roald Dahl who I absolutely loved as a child.

Another vote for Betty MacDonald (esp Onions in the Stew).

lots ( I re-read far more than I read new books)

PG Wodehouse, esp the Psmith books
Agatha Christie
Sherlock Holmes stories
Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede
LOTS of children's books: the William series, the Little House series, Ballet Shoes, Secret Garden, the Little Women series, Arthur Ransome...
Dorothy L Sayers
Jennifer Crusie's books

there are far more than I have read oodles of times (think 20+ ). Some I read every year, like A Box of Delights at Christmas.

oh and the Dark is Rising sequence (just finished re-reading in fact)

Whenever my stress levels get too high, or something traumatic is happening I read Ghost Story by Peter Straub. It is strangely comforting despite being really scary. The last time was while my mother was dying.

Robert Harris - all of his books
JKR - Harry Potter Series
Phillip Pullman - His Dark Materials and Sally Lockhart Series
Margaret Michell - Gone with the Wind
Colleen McCullough - The Thorn Birds
Jacqueline Susan - Valley of the Dolls

I tend to read these when I'm down or things are stressful as I find anything more difficult/weighty too hard to concentrate on, but find TV doesn't take me away from myself enough iykwim.

My ultimate comfort reads are EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia books.

But I'll also go back to Terry Pratchett, most Austen, Vanity Fair. I'm with you on the Mitford - The Pursuit of Love, and Love in a Cold Climate. Also the older Jilly Coopers - the ones with the girls' names - I'm gradually re-collecting them, having first read them in my teens, I think.

Books I love, but need more concentration to read, so can't quite count as comfort reads, are the Dorothy Dunnet Niccolo and Lymond series.

haven't read any Jilly Coopers for years, JackieNo - I do remember swapping them avidly as teenagers... did they have naughty bits?

EffiePerine - I love Sherlock Holmes too, love the way him and Watson are always doing things like dashing off to Croydon on the 3.13 am train, having missed the 3am one. Transport was soo much better in those days, as was the post (about 10 deliveries a day, I reckon!)

bagsforlife, love onions in the stew too, such an idyllic life...

Only slightly naughty bits - they're very funny to re-read. All the clothing descriptions are very dated.

what was that one called where some frumpy type goes off to the south of france with a tennis coach or something and gets an amazing tan in one day and a new haircut and is suddenly the hottest thing the Riviera has ever seen?

Imogen.

Plenty available on Amazon (and second hand, even cheaper).

wow, you really are reading them Jackie, aren't you?

from my half-baked, half-remembered description (it's been over 20 years) to a title in one minute!

ok, brief me on Octavia

ok, just checked on Amazon.

I just knew it had something to do with a canal barge! What a random piece of trivia I have been storing in my mind all these years. Way to go, Jilly....

I really am. There was a thread not so long ago, where lots of people reminisced about them. Will search - you'll enjoy it...

Here's the thread.

ta for the link, Jackie...

funny how everyone remembers imogen's haircut!

am very impressed by everyone else's in depth knowledge of those books though, clearly a lot of JC comfort readers out there.

Didn't we all want to be Imogen, or at least, to be transformed from shy, gawky schoolgirl into sultry vixen just by getting a haircut and some new clothes? I still do . (Obv am not a schoolgirl any more).

OMG! my RL nickname is based on one of the characters from Imogen (the moggle... you all know who I mean) My friends thought I was like her
Everyone now calls me a shortened version of this - even my parents

• wow! Do you have inky black hair?

unfortunately it was my personality they likened
as I recall she was sophisticated in the way only brainless people can be My brothers used to prefix my nickname with Sophisti-

I like to think I've come on a bit in the years since I was 13!!

My most read is Sunset Song by Lewis Grassick Gibbon, the first of his 'Scots Quair' trilogy. The rhythm of the language is very soothing, plus I come from that part of the world, originally, so it has a comforting familiarity. I know it so well that I can just dip in and out of it.

I'm also really fond of Paul Auster's True tales of American Life www.amazon.co.uk/True-Tales-American-Life-Auster/dp/0571210708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=121469 3155&sr=1-1
Another book which can be dipped in and out of, because each tale is short. Then all you have to do is choose your genre: spooky;romance;loss etc.

For Those I Loved by Martin Gray is my most read autobiography. Had it been fiction, you'd think it was a touch improbable. Basically - spoiler here - he loses all his closest family twice in his lifetime. I don't like his writing style, but the story puts mundane woes into perspective.

Another vote for In this House of Brede
The Rectors Wife - Joanna Trollope
Diary of a nobody
Oranges are not the only fruit

Message withdrawn

I read the Cazalet chronicles when DS2 was a baby (how did I manage that??)13 years ago, will get them out again and re-read I think. They were brilliant. Also good book by Elizabeth Jane Howard - Something in Disguise, was adapted for TV with Anton Rodgers years ago. VG. Harpomarx - glad to see another Onions in Stew fan - love, love, love that book since a little girl (mother had it) and now my 21 year old DD has read it too...(quite a while ago) and we still quote hilarious bits from it.