Comfort Reads

I read this delightful little article from BookTrust the other day:
https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2019/april/the-soothing-power-of-uncomplicated-pleasures-why-we-should-treasure-comfort-reading
All about how we should encourage children to read whatever they like, without passing judgement and it's a good thing for them to take comfort from books, in an uncertain world.  It talks about how books can be an anchor of reassurance when we are children and that kids are far more likely to re-read their favourite books than adults are. I have to take issue with this point, about it being only in childhood that we return to our favourite reads, as I often re-read books, particularly in times of stress. Sometimes, when I'm reading a particularly good book for the first time and it sends thrills of appreciation through me, I know I'm going to read it again. The last book I read that had this effect on me was Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans.

Evans used to be a comedy TV producer and I think it shows in her writing. Crooked Heart is funny, seemingly, effortlessly so, but also devastatingly moving. It is set during the Second World War and tells the story of ten year old NOEL, a precocious child who has just lost his only family - in the figure of his godmother, MATTIE, and is evacuated to the countryside. He lands up with a woman called VERA, who never has enough money and is constantly scheming to try and scratch a living. When I say that this book is moving I mean that there are moments in it that hook you right in the guts, but it never tips over into sentimentality. The characters seem so real, right from the beginning, that you feel that you are walking right alongside them, smelling the dust as it's stirred up from the roads. Someone once took issue with the fact that my copy of  I Capture the Castle (one of my very favourite books) had a quote from J.K. Rowling on the cover that said that the protagonist of the book was one of the 'most charismatic narrators she'd ever met'. This person sneered at Rowling's use of the word 'met' but surely that is what a really great book should do - bring the characters totally to life for you and make you feel as if you know them. Rowling is right, by the way, Cassandra from I Capture the Castle is immensely charismatic (IMO).

Going back to the childhood reads. I loved reading, as a child, as much as I hated P.E. My obliging mother used to write notes for me, excusing me from P.E or Games, as her own mother had done for her when she was a child (I come from a long line of duffers). Once a sceptical P.E teacher had looked at my note, saying that I couldn't do P.E as I was currently suffering from scurvy, and said;
"Well, you needn't think you can sit there doing nothing [during the P.E lesson] - you'll have to read a book!" She had no idea how happy this made me! Not only had I got out of performing some kind of humiliating assortment of physical contortions, I didn't have to watch anyone else doing it either! And I got to read Prince Caspian. At the time I was making my way through the Chronicles of Narnia, probably for about the fourth time.

So yes - I definitely turned to books in times of crisis, stress, boredom and panic. Books blocked out the rest of the world on public transport, they provided comfort in unfamiliar places, they accompanied me on hospital visits. When I got so stressed about taking my A levels that I thought the chest pains I was having meant I was having a heart attack, I turned to the Paddington books by Michael Bond and they worked - they helped me to relax. The worst thing about being depressed, as a teenager, was that I lost my love of books, they stopped 'working' for me. I never lost my appetite for food, as other people did, I lost my appetite for reading, which was a far greater loss as far as I was concerned.  Thankfully it came back to me.

What books did you love as a child?

Which ones, if any, do you re-read now?