My 10 Favourite Comfort Reads | A Celebration of Re-reading

[@NotSoAverageJo]

This video is PERFECT for me because I’m feeling the burnout. The passion that you showed in this video inspired me to pick up one of my comfort reads again today. Great video!

[@storytoob]

That makes me happy❤️ enjoy!

[@ladymairreads]

I always go to a reread (can be grimdark) when I’m stressed or tired. I just love that comfort of knowing the stories and characters.

[@storytoob]

Same! Dark books can also be comforting (but not always)

[@mitch8948]

Almost all of my fantasy reading this year has been rereads and I see that remaining the case for some time to come.

[@BookishChas]

Thank you for this video Yolanda. It’s really nice hearing your comfort reads and why they mean so much to you.

[@storytoob]

Thanks Chas!

[@artbyandia]

I do reread something at least once a year. That is how I know a book is a favourite. No matter how much I read it I still enjoy it so much and sometimes the new reads aren't giving me that feeling I crave. This was a really nice video. It's interesting to see what people find comforting. I also think RotE is comforting even though it gets very bleak. But something about the way Hobb writes about mundane activities makes me feel that way.

[@storytoob]

Completely agree about RotE! It can get quite dark but I never find it hopeless. There’s something about how she writes characters that I just find so beautiful

[@christine_reads]

I adore a comfort read, maybe not the whole book but definitely chapters or passages that struck home in some way. My comfort reads fall more in the lines of revisiting works from favorite romance authors and a mystery or two from my college years but for fantasy Terry Prachett's Tiffany Aching books, Tamora Pierce Song of the Lioness, and Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson/Alpha & Omega series are what first come to mind. Revisiting via audiobook has been its own delight too with these old favorties.

[@storytoob]

Ohhh yes revisiting favourite paragraphs and chapters is also great ❤️

[@christine_reads]

@@storytoob it definitely is quicker and allows more time to read new favorites 😆!

[@SarahAsYouWish]

Great video. You’ve included many of my all time favorites on this list and may have convinced me to give The Infernal Devices a try. I had sworn off Cassandra Clare after absolutely hating City of Bones, but I’ve been reassured her writing improves with later series.

[@storytoob]

She definitely does improve! But be warned, she still likes a good dose melodrama 😂 but I think it works better in a Victorian setting than in a contemporary one

[@kevin.jenkins]

Great video and discussion, Yolo! I used to be the kind of person to not reread at all because I always felt like I was wasting time when I could be reading new things. But starting last year, and *especially* this year, I've fully embraced rereading whenever I feel like it and it's been such a pleasure to not only experience the stories and characters I love so much again, but to also be taken back to a better/simpler time of when I read them before. The nostalgia just hits so hard

[@storytoob]

Thanks Kev! The nostalgia is one of the best parts for sure! I’m always amazed about just how much I remember about where I was/what I was doing the first time I read something while I’m rereading it.

[@laurablakeauthor]

Oh Em Hen. Great choices!

[@storytoob]

She’s just the best ❤️

[@JosephReadsBooks]

A Confederacy of Dunces is my most repeated comfort read. The Black Company is another one. The Dresden Files will be a future comfort read for me. My wife and I plan on reading the entire series again before the next book is released. Red Rising will be another series my wife and I comfort read together. She just finished the first book and she is hooked! In my teens and early 20s my comfort read was the Wheel of Time. I read the series three times in 5 years 🤯. Great video and really cool video idea!

[@storytoob]

Red Rising!!!

[@sw3dge]

Great video and great reminder!

[@storytoob]

Thank you!

[@francoisbouchart4050]

A Tale of Two Cities is great! ❤

[@storytoob]

It really is!

[@marcweber8509]

If you love the musical descriptions of Name of the Wind, I think you would enjoy a certain character in Janny Wurts' Wars of Light and Shadow very much! Music is a major theme in that work.

[@storytoob]

Ohhh well that just made it shoot up the tbr 👀

[@marcweber8509]

@@storytoob Great! If I were to give a short a short pitch, I'd say that her prose is super visual (she's also a painter), although it might take a while to get into. She has one of the most fully realized worlds (including the magic) in the genre. Her character work is superb and her work is full of thematical depth, philosophically and spiritually. From a complexity standpoint, it drills ever deeper and makes you reevalue your morals and opinions constantly. So if you feel in the mood for a challenge, give it a try. Honestly, I think this up there with Malazan, ASoIaF, RotE, etc.

[@esmayrosalyne]

Long live the re-reads! Though, I do have to admit that a lot of my rereads are 'compulsory' rereads that I have to do before a new instalment in a series comes out because my memory betrays me every single time lol. I definitely need to do more pure comfort rereads!! Also, I wasn't expecting to come away from this video with a burning urge to read Shadowhunters, but here we are 🤣❤

[@storytoob]

Omg yes do and we can talk about it!!😂

[@esmayrosalyne]

@@storytoob you're a bad influence and I love you for it 🤣

[@wibre8753]

I don't re-read the way I did when I was younger. I'm in my fifties and trying to read as many books I can, at this point.

[@RJGibson7]

I feel like this year i'm rereading a lot more, it's honestly been amazing. Some of my comfort reads are HP and Red Rising but there's a couple of series i think will become comfort reads in the future like First Law and a pattern of shadow and light by Melissa McPhail (i've only read the first two but i think about it nearly every day tbh, it feels more personal to me because i know next to nobody who's also read it lol)

[@storytoob]

I don’t know if I’ve ever ever heard of Melissa McPhail👀 just looked up the series and it sounds great. So sad to see that she passed away.

[@RJGibson7]

@@storytoob yeah it’s awful, she passed a couple of weeks after I read the first book, her daughters and her best friend is finishing the series which is amazing!

[@nazimelmardi]

Have to agree. I read thousands of books yet I don’t really care about tbr. I just started to listen because I kinda read everything translated from the English fantasy books that had any quality… (yes, it’s a possibility) so now for a while my quest is to read in English so is to reread a lot in English too. Like Discworld, etc, famous for the prose.

[@storytoob]

I have a bit of a project like that too (although I’m not taking it very seriously), because there are some books that I love that are originally in English that I only ever read in translation. It’s fun to then compare the experiences!

[@nazimelmardi]

@@storytoob absolutely. Like I read Lord of the Rings in high school in translation (and ours is incredibly good made by our president at the time may rest in peace!!) but reading it in English was quite a challenge. Same goes to Malazan. Or in fact Pride and Prejudice. We in Europe learn more about English history so we at least know the background for it more than American. 😂

[@thatsci-firogue]

I don't re-read as often as I'd like even though I know I love doing it but I'm hoping to change that going forward. Cheers for giving me that much needed push, Yolanda!

[@storytoob]

Always a pleasure!

[@Coleton2573]

I'm going to start referring to my favorite books as my horcruxes now. 😂 I'm surprised you've held yourself back from WMF, in my opinion it has everything NotW has except twice as much of all of it and it's just as good. Like double the amount of pages spent at the University and double the amount of pages spent traveling across the world to new places you haven't seen yet. WMF might be one of my horcruxes tbh. I don't reread very much, but Kingkiller Chonicle is one of the few that I have, as well as Harry Potter, First Law, Red Rising, and the Dresden Files.

[@storytoob]

Not gonna lie, this might be all the encouragement I needed to reread WMF sometime soon 😂

[@Coleton2573]

​@storytoob it's so good, sexy fairy time and all.

[@storytoob]

Yeah I never had as much of an issue with it as everybody else seem to 😂

[@Coleton2573]

@storytoob Same! 😂 Honestly, I could make some pretty strong arguments for why the Felurian section is one of the most important parts in the series for Kvothe and that it has some of the most beautiful writing out of both books. It's one of my favorite things to debate about in modern fantasy tbh, because the Felurian haters seem to be blind to everything else going on in that section except for the fact that sex is involved. 😅

[@SheWasOnlyEvie]

I love rereading. Most of the time, to be honest, I would rather be rereading! Some comfort reads: (tried and true comfort reads) The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Realm of the Elderlings, especially Fitz & the Fool, by Robin Hobb, Winternight trilogy by Katherine Arden, and Books of Babel by Josiah Bancroft; (potential comfort reads) Happy Place by Emily Henry, anything and everything by Sarah Tolmie, and Lapvona or Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh.

[@storytoob]

I love Ottessa Moshfegh as a comfort read 😂 honestly, you speak to my soul: I would also rather spend most of my time rereading!

[@SheWasOnlyEvie]

@@storytoob I guess that means I'm truly a Hot Girl fiction reader. 🤣

[@sheanajo19]

I love re readers and love re read reviews or chats!

[@storytoob]

Noted! 😉