Comfort Reading, Andre Norton, and Comfort Food

Savoring the stories we loved in days gone by

I have officially run out of room on my “to be read” bookcase. These things happen. Especially to people who fail to follow their own rules about not buying more books. So when it came time to pick a new book to read, did I rummage through that bookcase, as would be logical? No. No, I did not. I know.

Instead, I headed straight for the shelf on a different bookcase that’s home to Andre Norton novels. Look, there’s a lot of bad stuff going on in the real world right now, and I’m a wee bit stressed in my personal life, so I needed some comfort reading.

Just like the flavors of comfort food can take us back to childhood or happy times, comfort reading lets us savor the stories we loved in days gone by. It’s not new or trending, it’s familiar and soothing.

I started reading Isaac Asimov as a preteen and quickly discovered the other masters of the golden age of science fiction: Clarke, Heinlein, et al. In the mix was Andre Norton, who I did not know at the time was a woman. I would have read everything she wrote if I’d known. I was a feminist at a young age. And by that time — the late 1970s — she’d written a lot of books. I’d only read a few.