This time of year I usually go to the library and re-check out The Country of the Pointed Fir, by Sarah Orne Jewett. There's really not much to The Country of the Pointed Fir, as a novel. All that happens is a woman writer goes to Maine for the summer and meets some of the local people -- a woman who lives on an island, for instance, and an old man who's traveled on an Arctic expedition. Like a lot of 19th century writing it focuses on the quaint and is long on description. And yet I re-read every year around this time because it gives me a pure, unadulterated feeling of beginning-of-summer: blue water and boats and pines and sunshine. Another set of books I often turn to for the same reason are the Anne of Green Gables books. I know them by heart, and I know what I don't like about them, and yet I re-read them at least twice a year, purely for comfort.
How about you? What qualifies as your comfort reading?
Monday, May 3, 2010
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Anne comforts me, too. And so does a set of books by Patricia C. Wrede--the Dragons series. Mary Poppins, as well, and some fairy tales, and A Wrinkle in Time, and some E. Nesbit. Oh, and some Agatha Christie. I have them all near my bed so that I can grab one if necessary!
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