Comfort literature
Feb. 20th, 2012 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbI am gloomy and work-avoidant. Therefore, this is the perfect time to think about the books I reread for comfort, and why.
I do not reread brilliant literature for comfort. Ambitious books with sharp narrative edges and emotional razors are sometimes fine to read for the first time during the gloom. But ambitious literature demands large amounts of emotional and intellectual commitment: I can read Ursula K LeGuin, say, or Samuel R Delany, or Elizabeth Bear, or Charles Stross, when I'm short on sleep and my brain is firing on several mismatched cylinders. What I can't do is read them when I need a hug and a reassuring lie.
Sometimes my need for the reassuring lie is bad enough that I resort to Mercedes Lackey books. (Everybody needs comforting fluff sometimes. With extra special magic horsies.) Or skiffy romance. Or fantasy lesbian romance, which is surprisingly comforting. (It is nice to read something where no one ever has to fight the patriarchy. Ever.)
Sometimes I just read space opera. Space battles and techsposition don't ask anything of me.
And sometimes I dig out Tanya Huff's books, or Michelle Sagara's Cast in... series (which always, for some reason, I find cheering despite the fact it has creepy parts), or reread Sayers, or Madeleine E Robins' Point of Honor/Petty Treason (I would be so there with the third book, except it hits $40+ with shipping, and that's just ouch), or go for Tamora Pierce.
Or fairly worldbuilding-light epic fantasy. Terry Goodkind's first book is a grand example of this - and so is Kristen Britain, who is much less horrifying than Goodkind becomes in his second book, so much so I'm almost reluctant to mention them in the same breath. But their books (well, only Goodkind's first) serve the same purpose in my head.
So I think I'm picking up another special horsie book and heading to bed.
I do not reread brilliant literature for comfort. Ambitious books with sharp narrative edges and emotional razors are sometimes fine to read for the first time during the gloom. But ambitious literature demands large amounts of emotional and intellectual commitment: I can read Ursula K LeGuin, say, or Samuel R Delany, or Elizabeth Bear, or Charles Stross, when I'm short on sleep and my brain is firing on several mismatched cylinders. What I can't do is read them when I need a hug and a reassuring lie.
Sometimes my need for the reassuring lie is bad enough that I resort to Mercedes Lackey books. (Everybody needs comforting fluff sometimes. With extra special magic horsies.) Or skiffy romance. Or fantasy lesbian romance, which is surprisingly comforting. (It is nice to read something where no one ever has to fight the patriarchy. Ever.)
Sometimes I just read space opera. Space battles and techsposition don't ask anything of me.
And sometimes I dig out Tanya Huff's books, or Michelle Sagara's Cast in... series (which always, for some reason, I find cheering despite the fact it has creepy parts), or reread Sayers, or Madeleine E Robins' Point of Honor/Petty Treason (I would be so there with the third book, except it hits $40+ with shipping, and that's just ouch), or go for Tamora Pierce.
Or fairly worldbuilding-light epic fantasy. Terry Goodkind's first book is a grand example of this - and so is Kristen Britain, who is much less horrifying than Goodkind becomes in his second book, so much so I'm almost reluctant to mention them in the same breath. But their books (well, only Goodkind's first) serve the same purpose in my head.
So I think I'm picking up another special horsie book and heading to bed.
