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What Books Are Your Comfort Reads? (Patreon)

Published:
2021-09-10 16:53:47
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2026-06
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Dear Readers —

I will be sitting down with a coffee to record a couple of podcasts this week. One is about how to get started book collecting as a hobby, the other is an appreciation for comfort reads.

Do you have any books that provide you with comfort?

And what makes a book a "comfort read"?

Comfort reads are intensely personal, and we often delight in them for reasons other than their aesthetic splendour.

Perhaps we befriended certain characters in our formative years. Perhaps a beloved family member read to us from a particular series. Or perhaps there is something soothing about a certain book's pacing, language, and atmosphere.

It would be wonderful to honour the books you curl up with. So please do let us know your favourites and why.

Of course, I'll be revealing the books that provide me comfort too.

Happy reading!

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What Books Are Your Comfort Reads?

Comments

mickyjjj

My comfort read is "the trouble with being born" Emil Cioran Time and again Cioran has wrapped me in a warm pessimistic blanket offering a personal comfort that no book has ever paralleled for me. Cioran's take on the world and the human experience is one which justifies our most repressive and terrifying thoughts. I often pick it up in times of quiet anxiety, or just quiet. To read Cioran's aphorisms is to have him in your company in times where you only ever felt alone. During this time spent with him, Cioran gently teaches, through no force or direct intention, how to sooth one's loneliest and most affecting moments. One aphorism I hold onto deeply says, "I do nothing granted. But I see the hours pass - which is better than trying to fill them." This has never failed to ease the pain of feeling that life is passing me by. this book will live eternally on my nightstand x

AJ Manson

I think comfort reads are more a reflection on how and when you encountered the book. I can acknowledge that 'On the Road' is... well, not a five-star book. but for 17 year old me it was transformative, and every time I go back to any of Kerouac's work, there is a magic there that helps me relive that excitement I felt when I was younger.

Vandana

Gosh so many of them! Wuthering Heights and Little Women because they were my first books in reading English Literature. Themes of religion, individual identity, class distinctions in England and America were things I was introduced to through these books in a world where internet didn't exist. I still reread them and I'm always delighted at the new depths to plumb with each reread. I also associate them with my own memory (a very Proustian idea) and my love for books as a child that has shaped me so much. I find hints of Lear in Wuthering Heights:O) Ben would you agree or vehemently disagree? :O) They're also safe spaces for me to dwell in. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh is another one. I developed a real love for lesser known Indian folklore and remote places through that book and that love affair still continues. The Picture of Dorian Gray introduced me to Gothic Literature and it's so visual I still get goosebumps reading some of my favourite passages from it. Proust is slowly becoming a comfort read and I attribute that purely to this book club. The past few months were really dark, I'd stopped reading completely and then I stumbled upon Proust in a bookshop, bought it on a whim, googled Proust and found this book club.:O) Serendipity and a safe space is what Proust mean to me right now:O)

Florian Pesantes

Twenty years ago I read and reread with much pleasure all the novels by Eric Ambler. The main character usually being a slightly naive, well meaning man trying to wriggle himself through difficult life circumstances and grasping seemingly extraordinary opportunities to get himself out of the quagmire by one bold move but sliding into more and more complications. The atmosphere of the years between the world wars. Over my whole lifetime it used to be Theodor Fontane’s “Stechlin”, the old Baron mildly seeing the world he was born into fading, with great kindness and tolerance, with charmingly mild opinions about people and their behaviour. With kindness and polite stoicism until his death during the weeks of decline and suffering. Loving the little pleasures of life. The funny individuals in this tale of the microcosm of the Brandenburgian backwoods. (Which happen to be the ones where my parents settled after retiring). And Thomas Mann’s “Zauberberg”, the cosmopolitan, cushioned bourgeois world before the Great War in a sanatorium for the privileged sufferers of tuberculosis. Tea cup dramas, philosophical discussions and plenty of diverse and interesting figures. I felt myself sitting with them in the refectory, on the balcony to breathe the icy air of the Swiss alps wrapped in warm blankets. Following the discussions of Naphtha and Settembrini. Smoking Sumatra cigars with young Castorp. Waiting for Mme Chauchat slamming the door and for Frau Stoehr’s next ignorant comment. Lately I enjoy much the readings of poetry by my friend Arthur, online or even better life, which so reliably expand my confidence to have a place in this immense universe in a rather ecstatic mood than a sleepy comfort.

Caroline P

I find that my comfort reads often have brilliant first lines/paragraphs that grab me and slow me down from the outset. When we had our first lockdown in the U.K. I didn’t feel unduly stressed but so much was going on that was unfamiliar I did find old comfort reads a good antidote to the madness that was all in the news. So I like the slow repetitiveness in Silk by Alessandro Barrico..it is a tiny book that has tiny chapters and takes you on a journey after silk worms to closed worlds. Often there are whole sections that are repeated…it is like a familiar piece of music. I have tried other books by the same author but this is the only one I love. Then Crow by Ted Hughes, which isn’t relaxing but is anarchistic and in a bizarre way I find it comforting in a dark, secretly raging way. I carry that with me to anything that involves a waiting room. The Odyssey by Homer, for the beginning (especially Emily Wilson’s translation), for the adventure that feels safely remote and is it ok to say the giggles..there are some bits that make me laugh in that book because Odysseus can be a bit of a adolescent nit wit at times even tho he is too old for that. And I find that comforting in that not all heros are heros all the time. Wuthering Heights, Lord of the Rings, The English Patient, Philip Pullmans Dark Materials are books I have read so many times times, thanks to this book club a great big comforting hug from Proust.

Caroline P
>>67576601

I just looked this up because I hadn’t heard of it and in the process of looking I ended up buying it. Thank you for that recommendation

Vandana

Amazing. I really enjoy Pullmans His Dark Materials too. I wonder Caroline if you've read the new ones that form the Book of Dust Trilogy?

Caroline P
>>67620508

Hello, yes I have and although I enjoyed them, the new ones don’t have that magic that the first ones had. Really of the first ones I quite liked the first one but loved the second and totally loved the third. I do want to read Paradise Lost since Pullman was so influenced by that, but so far I have been nervous of being out of my depth with it. How about you Vandana?

Sharon xx

Okay, so I've realised that I don't have a comfort read - who knew?! I did as a child for sure, there are still a few titles that I remember I returned to again and again [mostly by Enid Blyton, Louisa M Alcott and Laura Ingalls-Wilder] but that isn't a thing now I'm an adult. So, I think I have comfort authors and genres depending on need and mood. Dickens is certainly one I turn to when I need a hug in a book. Anything fantasy based when I need some escapism. Poetry when I'm feeling stressed - Emily Dickinson or any of the War Poets. I enjoy travelling back in time with books written before I was born as I love history and feeling like I'm right there in that moment so they tick my desire to learn about both an era and an author. So, that didn't really answer the question did it? lol Currently my author of choice for comfort would be Dickens but ask me again in a year and it will probably have changed. Sorry, Ben - I know that was such a rubbish answer lol. x

Caroline P
>>67622964

Just saying Sharon, I really like your answer, I don’t think it is rubbish….and comfort authors and genres seems a brilliant way to snuggle down to take some refuge. Ps I still like the Wishing Chair and the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton.

Scott W

Anything by Iain M Banks. Those books remind me of a time in my life with less responsibility and a lot more reading time! I could get into a book by Banks and be lost in another world and stay up all night to finish it if I wanted to. I would rate Use of Weapons as deserving of serious reading. Also, Lord of the Rings, because, I think, I devoured it in an escapist fashion at a difficult time in my early life. I was struggling as the Fellowship struggled, and so connected deeply with their journey, their losses, and ultimately their victory. I really must re-read the whole thing some time.

Florian Pesantes
>>67618897

Don Dolese, you’re right I’d read them in German language as this is my maternal lingo. Apart from physical education, English lessons brought me my worst grades in school. I only recently started to read English books and yet have to look up some vocabulary, not only when reading Shakespeare. So unfortunately I can’t give you any advice as to which translation

Bill Freeman

Arlington, Virginia - USA Friends, This is a great exercise and I appreciate the many and varied posts. My go-to books: - Satish Kumar: The Buddha and the Terrorist - TOP RECOMMENDATION - Thich Nhat Hahn. The Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore - John McQuiston II, Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Life - The New Testament (Jerusalem Bible): Matthew, Chapters 5-7; Matthew, Chapter 25: 31-46; Luke, Chapter 15; John, Chapter 1 (Prologue) The above are small, easily digestible works. I can see adding Siddhartha

Vandana
>>67615516

Ghosh is a good writer. I'd definitely recommend him. The other books of his that I enjoy the most are the Ibis Trilogy(on the opium wars between Britain and China) and the Great Derangement (non fiction-on art as a response to climate change).

Pablo

Hi Comrades, Arriving ‘fashionably late’ to this party as it’s been a brisk weekend of activity for me, now that I’m feeling somewhat improved. This is a great question to propel an illuminating conversation from Ben. Lovely to see that it has already generated a lot of interesting and intriguing posts from other HLBC members. Others have proposed the hypothesis that comfort books are time and context dependant, which I would heartily agree with. With that in mind, I think that off the bat for right now, my comfort read would definitely be In Search of Lost Time by Proust - I simply adore it. Even though it’s been a few years now since my first go at it, I know that I can just pick up any of the volumes and get enveloped in it again, transported to the places and characters that populate the book. I guess that maybe at some point something else will come along and displace Proust at the top, as that’s the nature of things, I must be open to the possibilities and the process of discovery is endlessly stimulating and exciting to me 😉 Having said that I have to give some ‘honourable mentions’ to a few other works for different reasons that cropped up at different points in my life. There were some childhood books that I re-read and enjoyed. Although I fear that the first of these was a bit of blatant agenda pushing on the part of one of my junior schoolteachers: A stern old middle-class battle axe with a startling similarity to Margret Thatcher both in appearance and demeanour. But I think that it was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis was the ‘cosmic trigger’ that kick-started by lifelong journey into imaginative literature. I guess thanks are due to Mrs Bird, who’s love of books did indeed rub off on me. Likewise, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett came to me around the same time, and I enjoyed that. The final childhood read would be The Hobbit, which lead to some very geeky writing of runes and tengwar scripts between other fans at school in my early years. That and LOtR were a bit like a virus for young boys, maybe they still are a bit of literary rite of passage? Things went up a gear in my teens and that’s were final three thoughts of comfort reads lay, though I do worry that these might make me appear more ‘odd cookie’ than is actually the case! Again, the first step in another journey (this time into the amazing world of Russian literature) with the Byronic anti-hero of Pechorin in Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time. To give full disclosure, it my mother read it as part of an evening course that she attended, and I was intrigued by the cover so borrowed it and read it. It blew me away at the time and this one is still in my top five; I have re-read it many times. But I am pondering as I type that it might be more of a young man’s novel and I should probably re-visit it again now I am more mature as I haven’t read it for a time now. Ditto for the second of these, which would be Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I could explain in more detail why, but this one really spoke to me in my teenage years and I revisited Holden many times during that period. Suffice to say that I found comfort in the idea that it wasn’t just me who felt weird and awkward at times; but hey, you could be weirder! My final shout like @AJ Mason would be On the Road By Jack Kerouac, I read a lot of the ‘Beat’ literature in my late teens and early 20’s off and on and I guess by that point in life had found my own sub-culture of hip and beautiful young things. ‘The Beats’ seemed to talk a similar language (like in-jokes that we shared ), mirrored the lives that we were living then, the questions we asked, answers that we obtained, and the events and life experiences that played out during that period. It still reminds me of the hedonistic fun of those times, youthful exuberance, the great moments we shared and all the experiences we had. Stop for tea anyone? 😉

Caroline P

Ben i meant to say to you ..when you talk about collecting books I have this book called ‘At Home With Books’ ..it is a coffee table book I suppose unless you are a bookish person. It’s subtitle is ‘how book lovers live with and care for their libraries’ it is filled with stories and pictures of the most wonderful libraries but the one I think you might love is the library of Keith Richards. The subtitle to his chapter is ‘after a life on the road, reading anchors me’ and then that chapter is about his library and his books. The next best thing to a good book is a book about good books. The book is by Estelle Ellis, Caroline Seebohm and Christopher Simon Sykes.

Florian Pesantes
>>67682525

Pablo, wonderfully presented list. You know to I still an appetite just as the Master Benjamin!

hardcoreliterature
>>67583373

I fell in love with Kerouac at the exact same age! He represented a whole new world, and a life waiting for me to discover. I also came back to him after many years, which was an interesting experience. This provided a nice discussion for the podcast, which should be out soon, so thank you, AJ :)

hardcoreliterature
>>67619371

You've totally sold Silk, Caroline. I've just ordered it (beautiful cover), so I'll let you know what I think. It's also great to see some poetry mentioned here - I completely relate, and Crow has long been a favourite of mine too. I've read this out on the podcast, which should be out soon :)

hardcoreliterature
>>67643008

Great choice of comfort read! Science fiction and fantasy always does it for me. I used to love the books Banks put out without the middle initial - The Wasp Factory and Canal Dreams being two I enjoyed during university. Also great to have another vote for Lord of the Rings :) I've read your comment out on the show!

hardcoreliterature
>>67652480

Great selection right there :) Thank you, Bill. I enjoyed engaging with this one on the podcast, which should be out very soon!

hardcoreliterature
>>67695012

Wow! The pictures are incredible - I'll have to pick this one up for when I finally get settled with my house. It looks like it would have a ton of inspiration for one building a home library :) I do love a good book about books. The pleasure of reading about reading is very real!

Jetzabel Peniche

Hi Everyone :), For me, I like to read for comfort are Star War books and sometimes comics. I really enjoy them and take my time reading them. Right now I am reading Lost Stars from Claudia Gray. I also like to read Jodi Picoult and my favorite book from her is “my sister’s keeper”, I have read that one many times and each time, I cry and cry at the end. It’s a very touching story.

hardcoreliterature
>>67889559

Brilliant stuff! Thank you for sharing, Jetzabel. I do love getting lost in a good series. I also spent a couple of years binge-reading comic books. Returning to them now is still such a comfort. I read Picoult's My Sister's Keeper a few years ago - what a tearjerker!