comfort reads

Well it is certainly a woeful year for blogging for me. But it is a hectic year for uni, work and apparently everything else. Heading into panic mode. So at the moment not much is getting done, and all my books are comfort reads. Books to read when your brain is all worn out at the end of the day. If I look at my current reading list, I think it pretty much sums up all my comfort-read categories:


1. Agatha Christie
Maybe that should be 'murder mysteries', but there are few things as comforting as Agatha Christie. I'm currently reading 'Lord Edgeware Dies', which has Poirot, dead actresses and suspects galore. Agatha Christie has written so many books I don't think I've read them all, the only problem is that it can be hard to sort out the ones I have read from the ones I haven't. Pretty sure this is a new one though.


2. Anything with a really strong plot
Fast-paced books, preferably full of action, wake you up at the end of those 10 hour days. I just finished 'The Neon Court' by Kate Griffin (which I was always going to read, but came at the right time), which managed the series' usual trick of dropping you right in the action and making you read quickly through to the end so you could figure out what was going on. Maybe not a true 'comfort' book as such, but lots of fun.


3. Young Adult (YA)
Not all YA, but there is something soothing about a good one of these. I went to the library and just browsed the YA section, looking for a Diana Wynne Jones or Margeret Mahy or something with romance. What I got was 'Chiggers' by Hope Larsson, a graphic novel (nice to the sore brain) about friendship at summer camp. Just the ticket.


4. Rereading something old and familiar
Preferably a children's book or YA that you have a lot of fondness for. Like a warm bath. Combines nostalgia and reading and a book you know from the start will be a good one. Not actually rereading anything at the moment, but now I have a sudden desire to read some Narnia. Next on the to be read list?


There you go, that's pretty much what I'll be doing for the next month- working like crazy and reading some comfort reads whenever I get the chance.

Comments

  1. Anonymous3/5/11 11:47

    "YA"? My tired brain can't make sense of that acronym, and it's still only 7.30 in the morning.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Catie5/5/11 22:56

    Young Adult, ie. books targeted at teenagers. I'll edit the post, it will be clearer.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10/5/11 00:51

    I just found a new sci fi author - Paulo Bacigalupi - who I enjoyed. His book "The Windup Girl" (windup as in clockwork) kept me going for longer than an airport lounge wait. I may try whatever else he has out there. especially as "T W G" was his maiden effort. I have to say, sci fi authors have to try harder to keep me pleased these days.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Catie17/5/11 22:34

    Oh I've heard about that one, sounds intriguing.

    Yes it gets hard to read in one genre for a while I think, I stopped reading fantasy as much for a while myself, but I've found some good ones lately.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

famous first words

Skimming through the internet the other day I came across a reference to a line of startling familiarity, a line that made me realise some first lines stick in your head forever: "Sing Goddess, the rage of Peleus' son Achilles" (funnily enough,  I can never remember the first line proper until I see it, as my friend and I spent much of year 12 Ancient History misquoting it as "rage Achilles, rage on Agamemnon". We were also amused by the fact that 'Xerxes' backwards spelt 'Sexrex'. Yeah, mature I know.) From Homer, The Illiad Ironically, a first line that I find impossible to remember is one of the most recognisable for me. I'm not usually very good at first lines, but there are a few I'd know anywhere... "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote" My English classes at university drummed this one into me- the first line of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'. I think Chaucer is a genius, but this first line is not quite ...
Read more

To Start With, Quotes

From my little black book. Sign outside Branxton: "Drive carefully, we have two cemetaries, no hospital" Tombstone, Tilba cemetary: "Whiffo gone fishing A free spirited man who is forever in our hearts" "Heinz tomato ketchup makes food taste KETCHUPPY" - tomato sauce bottle "I was just wondering how I ever could have laughed at you" "I hope you'll always laugh at me" The Day Will Dawn, cheesy movie from 1942 "Each man kills the thing he loves" The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde Ad outside Japanese restaurant in Sydney city "Sexy chicken on rice" "I don't own a house or a car, all I have is a borrowed tv, but that's what you get when you take off and travel." Random bus stop conversation “She had a voice with hormones” ‘A Woman’s Secret’, 1949 movie “Oolong Imperial: A work of tea art” Tea rooms in the city “The burdens and the joys of being chosen to be more than a flu...
Read more

on verse

I had alot of time to kill on the bus trip back from Canberra, and so I was reading through my English textbook (The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edition, so not too bad at all)for about three hours. This is just so that you understand the cotext in which I came up with the idea for this post. Why do people always associate poetry with rhyme? It doesn't have to be the case. And I think that most people would know that alot of poetry doens't rhyme, or is at least not in rhyming couplets. This is not even a new idea. It's not just these new-fangled poets who dispense with tradition and so rhyme. Old English poetry doesn't rhyme, it alliterates instead. Shakespeare often wrote in blank verse which means NO RHYMING. Robert Browning doesn't always write in rhyme. In short, poetry doesn't necessarily equal rhyme even before the 21st century. Now, I have to confess that I am a bit biased in this as I always thought that rhyming couplets tend to sound silly. And abab...
Read more