Comfort reading

I haven't been around much in the blogosphere lately, I realise, for a number of reasons. Mainly life seems squeezed in too tightly to give me the free time to spend on the internet at the moment, which is a shame as I've missed my travels around people's blogs, keeping up with what you're all reading and doing.

We are also coping with our cat's first serious illness in his nine years, which I'm finding very traumatic. He is probably going to have to have an operation next week once the vet figures out what is wrong with him. So at the moment a lot of time is being spent making sure he is as happy and comfortable as possible.

I'm reading too, quite voraciously, there is a pile of books read recently sitting on my desk. And vet-visits last weekend meant that some serious comfort reading was in order, you know the sort of reading that just takes you completely out of yourself so you forget to worry about the worrying thing for a little while, but while still being good writing so you don't have any self-loathing afterwards. So first, on the bad vet-visit-day itself, I treated myself to the wonderful fluff of a Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy - much recommended by various people and thank you all, it was perfect.

Then I sank into the deep warm comfort of Wendell Berry with Andy Catlett: Early Travels. Berry's wonderful prose took my mind off waiting for the vet to call with blood test results.

I am beginning to suspect that Berry may be my favourite author, his books are so thoughtful, beautifully written and just plain enjoyable. I loved Andy Catlett almost as much as I loved Jayber Crow, and was almost breathless with the anticipation of meeting up with Jayber and Burley Coulter again, they are like old friends. It is a crying shame that Berry is not really sold in this country; I bought this novel from the Harvard bookstore last winter where I stocked up on Berry as I knew I'd never see him on bookstore shelves in the UK. That said though, I have seen one lonely little copy of a book of his poems in Waterstones recently, so perhaps there's hope. Thank goodness for the internet, where I can order all the Port William books, and I soon will. I was concerned Jayber Crow might have been a fluke, and the others not as wonderful, but Andy Catlett has put my mind at rest on that score.

I have bought the odd book too during my blogging break: I picked up a collection of Robert Frost's poems the other day, as he is quoted a lot in Timothy Steele's book on metre, and I wanted to know more of this American poet. Then there was a book I first read about on Danielle's blog, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, about a sensational murder case in the 1860s which inspired, among others, Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone. This was particularly attractive as it touched my favourite subject of legal history when the, at times, farcical legal hearings were described. That has already been read and is part of the 'waiting to be written about' pile. And Mathias Freese has sent me a copy of his short story collection 'Down to a Sunless Sea' which I am looking forward to reading very shortly.

Currently I am lost in the Roman Empire, as I have finally got round to Robert Graves' I, Claudius. I began to read it as a teenager and found it hard going but the intervening twenty years has included spending time with classical authors such as Suetonius and Tacitus, meaning the events and characters described are very familiar, and this now counts as excellent comfort reading too.