Comfort reads

When I was younger I read and reread series all the time - sometimes in anticipation of a new release but sometimes just because I was bored or lonely. I'm reviewing my shelves and making sure everything is catalogued on LT and I have already come across comfort reads that I want to just drop everything and read again.

Douglas Adams Dirk Gently books, Piers Anthony's Cluster novels, Incarnations of Immortality, and early Xanth books, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, the Tower and the Hive, and the early powers books.

What's your comfort read(s)? Is it any genre in particular? For me it's mostly fantasy.

My comfort reads are split between fantasy and classic English novels. The One Comfort Read to Rule Them All is JRR Tolkien. I couldn't even guess the number of times I've read The Hobbit and LOTR. Otherwise there are a number of favorites I've reread a lot; probably the first in line is Charles de Lint. Also children's & young adult series, like the Narnia books.
The English fiction is authors like Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, Hardy, & Virginia Woolf. Also a handful of rather out-of-style novelists, of whom the best example is Elizabeth Goudge -- old fashioned but heartwarming. My favorite is The Dean's Watch , read many times.

Mine are also mostly fantasy, but also some contemporary fiction. Almost anything by Diana Wynne Jones, Anne McCaffrey's Harper Hall trilogy, some of the earlier Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey, most of Robin McKinley's books, Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, to name a few 😊

Tolkien, for me is the ultimate comfort read. Runner up would be, the original 3 Xanth books by Piers Anthony + the first set of Amber books by Zelazney. I guess because I read them all as a kid, so sort of takes me back to that simpler time.

I don't have a lot. I haven't traditionally been a big "re-reader", though in the last 5 years or so, I've started re-reading a lot of old favorites simply because it's been so long since I originally read them that I don't actually REMEMBER much about them anymore and I felt like I needed to check if they still hold up, if I'm going to be recommending them to people.

The one exception is probably the Chronicles of Prydain. I still don't re-read them super-often, but when I do, it's just for the joy of it, not for memory issues. The Hitchhiker's Guide is another one... though I don't remember the last time I picked those up, so they're probably due.

Robert Rankin's Brentwood books are my comfort reads, especially the trilogy in 5 parts.

>6 isabelx: oh wow, haven't read these for a long time! I actually lived and worked in the area when I read them which gave them that edge for me

I find myself picking up Guy Kay when I want a comfortable re-read. Especially Lions.