Comfort Book Stash

There are some days that take everything out of me. By the time I’ve cleaned up from dinner, I barely have the energy to collapse on the couch. These are the nights I used to find myself doomscrolling. Somehow, being so tired I could barely think would turn into three hours of staring blankly at my tiny screen — full-on mouth-breather mode. I would come up out of that black hole still exhausted but now also wired. Too amped up to go to sleep. It was worse than just being tired.

I didn’t like the version of myself that spent my free time like that. Not because there is anything wrong with it — I love a cute dachshund video as much as the next guy. But, for me, it felt like I was putting a band-aid over the real problem — I was anxious and worn out from my day, and what I needed as an antidote was to relax.  Not to zone out. Not to disengage completely from the world. To relax.

I started by asking myself some questions. When I'm stressed and worn out, what do I turn to for a lift? What makes me feel good? What puts a smile on my face and doesn’t leave me more strung out? How did I relax before social media?

The answer was easy — books.

Some of my earliest memories are of reading, and back before my tiny-computer-in-my-pocket days, I always had a book as a constant companion. I never lost my reading habit, but it had morphed over the past 10-15 years. I spend all day every day at work reading. I wish it were the riveting kind, but legal documents are not known for their thrill factor.

I let myself slide into reading less frequently. Then, I almost completely lost my love for fiction. I still read a lot of nonfiction because I like learning new things. But even those books were harder to sink into. I hate to say it, but my attention span had weakened like a neglected muscle.

Maybe the silver lining of increased work anxiety over the past year is that it’s helped me return to books. I found that after a day that leaves me frazzled, I want the comfort of a paperback in my hands. I want the thrill of a great story pulling me along.

Here’s something that surprised me though. I don’t want a new book when I’m exhausted. I want an old friend. A book I’ve read at least once, but maybe three times or five times before. Characters I know. Scenes that feel almost like memories. After abandoning two perfectly respectable but completely boring books last week, I realized what I actually wanted was an old friend.

I want my comfort book stash.

I’ve always had a habit of rereading books. Some I read again every year during a particular season. Some I pull randomly from the shelf. One thing I’ve noticed though — no matter if I revisit frequently or only every now and again, my comfort books feel like old friends. Their pages are familiar, some full of marginalia, some with little flags sticking out of many of the pages. Others bear no markings except the familiar creases in their spines or an old coffee stain on page 137.

I have a variety of books that could be included in the Comfort Book Stash. Nonfiction, fiction, children’s, young adult, even some travel books, and favorite issues of old magazines.  What I want to build right now is a little stack of old favorites I’ve read multiple times — books that are comfortable and require no effort from my end. I want a little emergency bookshelf beside my bed, so the next time my heart is weary and my spirit is frazzled, I can reach over and pluck out an old friend, and feel the soothing comfort of a dear companion.

The stack itself is a bit of a mix. A few essays, some novels, a childhood favorite or two, and a couple of books that take me away. But they all share one thing — I’ve read them before, and I know they’ll feel as comfortable as my favorite sweatshirt.