Bookish balm

   

    Brightening my inbox this morning was the nicest email from Deborah, thanking me for recommending Sue Gee's Reading in Bed which helped her through a recent illness.

    It's always lovely to hear that books I've enthused about have been similarly enjoyed by people who have picked them up as a result of my urging, but it's particularly gratifying to learn that a book has been useful in some way, or helped at a difficult time.

    We often talk about comfort reads and the good they can do, but following on from Deborah's kind message I wondered if anyone could suggest books which have been helpful on a deeper level. When we need more than just a cosy day on the couch, but rather reassurance, wisdom, the feeling of being in safe hands - true comfort at times of anxiety and stress - is there an author or book (fiction or non-fiction) you've found to provide that?

    No need to give personal information when answering that question, but if you have any candidates for what we might call a bookish first aid kit or literary medicine cabinet, it would be good to hear about them.

 

    (More frivolously, see this post and this one).

 

    The painting is Spring Day at Boscastle by Charles Ginner; Virago used it a few years ago for the cover of the superb One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, one of my top favourite books.

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Comments

[Dark Puss]

An excellent question. I don't have (probably used to) any comfort reads, though I do understand the concept! I'd love to say that a number of books on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy helped someone close to me, but despite being of intellectual interest (to both of us) I have no evidence that they did.

Not sure that you were looking for negative evidence BUT as I am sure you know in other areas, that of "big-pharma" for example, the supression of such evidence can lead to false hopes :-( Let me not dissuade anyone from reading such books; they cannot do any harm and for some (many?) people they may indeed be helpful. True comfort, support and reassurance for me in times of distress came from a very few, very close, friends - you know who they are I think.

[Cornflower]

Thank you, DP. Yes, you are right about the importance of friends.

[Nicola]

Jane Austen's Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility and Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant would be my choices.

[cathy]

Martha's Vineyard by Susan Branch, Sue Monk Kidd's Dance of the Dissident Daughter, How to be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis would be my first choices.

[Kathleen]

The Country Chlild by Alison Uttley. Letters from Compton Deverell by Denys Watkins Pitchford. An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott. Books are friends after all.

[Kathleen]

I must add that I turn often to Cornflower too.

[Callmemadam]

Bleak House helped me through a terrible time.
I turn to books you can lose yourself in, like Middlemarch or Mansfield Park.

[Amanda Craig]

What an excellent idea - and I too turn to Cornflower for the same reason. Almost all the great Victorians offer comfort, alongside Jane Austen and Mrs Gaskell, but one more recent discovery was Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Shuttle (she wrote The Secret Garden). It's about two American sisters, heiresses, one of whom marries a completely horrible English aristocrat who reduces her to a shadow. Her forthright younger sister knows something is terribly wrong, though their father believes they have been dropped as commoners; she crosses the Atlantic to find her, and rescues both her sister and the husband's estate, with a dramatic climax at the end. Highly recommended and published by Persephone Books.

[Cornflower]

Thanks, Nicola. That's one Anne Tyler I haven't read.

[Cornflower]

All new ones to me - thank you, Cathy.

[Cornflower]

Nice to see 'BB' mentioned. Thank you, Kathleen.

[Cornflower]

That's very kind.

[Cornflower]

Good that those classics earn their place on the shelf in more ways than one. Thank you, Barbara.

[Cornflower]

I read The Shuttle a few years ago and enjoyed it very much - thanks for the reminder, Amanda.

[Toffeeapple]

Almost anything written by women in the early 20th century for me.

[Sarah]

For a cathartic release I would recommend anything by Rosamund Lehman or Edith Wharton or even Antonia White. In extremis War and Peace or Madame Bovary, but best of all is Chekhov's short stories, although I must mention Arnold Bennett's "The Old Wives Tale", which I read after AS Byatt selected it as her Desert Island Discs' book. I think she said it was the best novel ever written, and my goodness it made me feel better about my lot.

[Rebecca]

To truly escape, I often turn to Angela Thirkell's wonderful novels! PG Wodehouse has helped me out lately, and the ordered unfolding of classic murder mysteries like those by Ngaio Marsh or Dorothy Sayres also provides balm. This is a timely topic. Thank you.

[cathy]

Omigosh! Seeing all these titles...my reading list has just grown exponentially!

[Naomi]

My comfort reading recommendations are Cazalet books by Elizabeth Jane Howard and The Inn at Lake Devine, an early book by Elinor Lipman. The opposite: many years ago at school pickup I overheard two women I didn't know discussing what books they should bring to a friend who was recovering from surgery. The Handmaid's Tale was mentioned and I interjected, "No, no!" Great as it is, how sad that it's back in the public consciousness right now.

[BookBarmy]

I also turn to Cornflower for things of comfort and beauty ~~ (both Cornflower blogs).

My favorite comfort authors are: Marcia Willett, Joanne Trollope and Elizabeth Berg.

I sometimes turn to memoirs in times of trouble, escaping my own problems by dipping into other lives. Jeannette Walls and Mary Karr are two extraordinary writers - who write with joy and without self pity.

Several recommendations in this comments section have been added to my list ~~ Thanks!

[Sylvia]

Miss Read's Thrush Green and Fairacre books, and Mary Stewart of course!