I spent most
of November reading for work—I was invited to pitch a story idea for an
anthology in another author’s world, but I hadn’t read any of the books in that
world since, ooh, 1995-ish?* I had thirteen on hand, plus I got one out of the
library, although no, I didn’t read them all. I dipped in and out, asked
questions, and eventually wrote a fully formed idea. I also had a vague idea
that had been niggling in the back of my head, so I went ahead and pitched that
as well…
Yeah. You
know which one they picked. But it’ll be more fun to write because I don’t
really know what it’s all about!
But that’s
not what I wanted to ramble about. There are a lot of things I want to ramble
about, actually, as I ponder how the holiday season affects me: ritual, family,
darkness and light, spirituality, death, snow/cold. A dozen different blog
posts float through my head. Many are interconnected.
Most come
back to story. Which doesn’t surprise me in the least.
My usual
traditional holiday reading is The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Most years, I try to read all five books in the
sequence, but that one is the most meaningful to me, set in a cold, snowy
British winter. I remember finding these books in my school library; not sure
if it was 8th or 9th grade. They built on Tolkien and
Lloyd Alexander to solidify my fascination with Britain, especially Wales, and
the deep magic there.
This year,
though, I find myself drawn to other books. I’m not sure how to explain it
except to call them comfort reading. Books that pull you down into the story
and the characters and you’re there and they’re real, and it’s not so much that
you can’t stop turning the pages as you’re not even aware of turning the pages.
Magic, yes, but often a more subtle magic.
I moved my
office upstairs at the beginning of the year, and as part of that created a
wall of books (there are more bookcases on other walls, but one wall is all
shelves), and in the process went through all of the fiction we have. I did get
rid of a few things. I also found things I hadn’t really thought about, even
though they were in a wall of bookshelves in my downstairs office, right there.
I’m reading
Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin right now,
because a few months ago I was staring at the shelves and it…called to me. I
read at least the first chapter right there, as if under a spell. When I
finished reading for work and looked around for the next book to read, that was
the one I wanted. Not the 200+ books in my To Read bookcase in the upstairs
landing, oh no. Tam Lin, dammit.
After that, I
think it’ll be The Wood Wife by Terri Windling. I’ve been reading her blog for the past few months, so that
seems…right.
I can’t quite
put my finger on the common thread of these books. I can feel it, I can almost
describe it, but then it slips away. Mythic fiction, maybe?
Do you have
comfort books? What are they? What do they have in common, and why do you love
them so?
--*Which is not
to say the reading was arduous—I enjoy this author immensely. It’s just that if
I’d had my way, I wouldn’t have necessarily binged on this author for a month
straight.
