Comfort Reading and Watching by Lucy Burdette

 

LUCY BURDETTE: I’ve said this before, and I’m sure it’s tiresome, but these are difficult wearying times we live in. I have often found myself looking for something familiar and comfortable to read or watch--something in a series so I know the characters. Sometimes a good murder mystery/police drama will do, like the many episodes of NYPD Blue. I love these people! John and I often say to each other, are we going to spend some time with our friends tonight? I watched an episode last week where the detectives were called to the scene of a dead man with his head in his lap. How can that possibly feel like comfort watching, but it does. I think it’s because of the lovable, wonderful, quirky and endlessly surprising characters in that police precinct. You always know that even if their world is filled with bad guys and violence, the good guys will always win in the end.

 I was also obsessed this winter with reading Jenny Colgan‘s series set in northern Scotland. You might guess because we live in Key West half the year now that I don’t like winter. But I like the idea of it, because it lends itself to coziness. Winter on Colgan‘s fictional isle of Mure is absolutely wicked, cold and windy, plus dark for many many hours in a day. Yet by the time she’s finished describing it, I can’t wait to get there because of the bustling pubs and the crackling fires and the sips of special Scottish whiskey. Each of her books in this series highlights a different character so you get to see the family and the community from a different point of view. Lots of bad things happen, people die, people are refugees from Syria, families are difficult. But Jenny makes them all palatable, maybe because community and good food trumps all ills?

Do you find yourself reaching for comfort books and television or movies? (Now this is making me wonder if this applies to food as well…)

RHYS BOWEN: I’m a great one for comfort reads and watches. I have all of Agatha Christie’s books. I stare at the shelf and see which one I might not quite remember then read it again. Usually I’m halfway through when I realize i do know whodunit. But it’s still quite calming. 

The same for television. Thank God for Britbox. I can watch Poirot, Marple, Sister Boniface, Rosemary and Thyme etc ad nauseam.

I can also re-watch the Vicar of Dibley, Miranda or any of the silly comedies when I really need cheering up.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Hmm, I don't really read books again. But I can always always watch My Cousin Vinny, or any Alfred HItchcock movie, or The Devil Wears Prada, or Say Yes to the Dress, or Chopped. I used to love What Not To Wear–is that still on? I love makeover shows. I can always watch Born Yesterday, or the Die Hard that’s at the airport, or absolutely any Tracy and Hepburn.The Philadelphia Story, and High Society. Any Fred Astaire. And oh, That’s Entertainment. I think if I sing along, I’m fine.

HALLIE EPHRON: oh, cousin Vinny!! Or Singin’ in the Rain. Or ET. Comfort watches rather than “reads” for me, too. I was just re-watching Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple series. And New Tricks hold up over and over.

JENN McKINLAY: I almost never reread or rewatch anything because so many books and shows, so little time. However, I did recently watch the K-Drama Crash Landing on You and much to my surprise, I watched it again. A South Korean woman crash lands into North Korea and is found by a Captain and his soldiers and it’s just soooo good. So, I guess that’s been my comfort watch. Now I’m looking for my next. As for a comfort read, I can’t think of any book that I’ve gone back to repeatedly but I am always on the hunt for a series to fall into. The most recent being The Shepherd King duology by Rachel Gillig, it’s a two volume series that reads like a fairy tale. Loved it.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hank, I am tickled by your “comfort” choices including Alfred Hitchcock and Die Hard! I might go with Die Hard–we all want to see the bad guy get his due–but not Hitchcock.

Lucy, I do get detective series being comfort watches, but medical dramas work for me, too. How that is possible with blood and gore and people’s lives in danger, I don’t know, but somehow it does. We just finished The Pitt, Noah Wyle’s new series set in a Pittsburg ER, which is astonishingly good. I had to check afterwards, and yes, all 19 seasons of ER are streaming, so if we run out of things to watch and want to check out baby Noah… That said, I don’t actually tend to re-watch a lot of stuff.

My reading has definitely been skewing towards the comforting lately. Here’s a recent find that I absolutely loved: MRS. QUINN’S RISE TO FAME by Olivia Ford, about a woman in her late 70s who applies for the fictional equivalent of Great British Bake Off. Also, Jenn’s I CAN’T EVEN, which I adored and it still has me thinking about the characters and wondering how they’re doing:-)

LUCY: John loved the Pitt too–the students annoyed me so much that I quit watching. Loved Mrs. Quinn, and have Jenn’s book on order! I meant to say Jenny Colgan and NYPD Blue aren’t reruns for me, I was just far behind the rest of the world!

DEBS: Lucy, I wish you’d stuck with The Pitt! The students get better! But here’s a fun TV crossover. If anyone is watching LUDWIG on Acorn (so fun and not really as silly as you think at first–there are undercurrents) the actor who plays Whittacker, the student from Nebraska in The Pitt, is actually Welsh, and is Detective Constable Simon Evans in Ludwig. His American accent was flawless–I would never have guessed he was British!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My daughter and her wife are DEEP into The Pitt, so I suppose I'll have to try it.

My comfort rereads? The Murderbot series by Martha Wells (which is coming to Apple TV in May and will get me to re-up my subscription!) Eva Ibbotson's novels for adults (marketed at YA, but that's not how she intended them.) Lucy's Key West series (just such a NICE world to live in.)

Weirdly, my comfort watches are disaster movies. Just last night I re-watched CONTAGION. For some reason, seeing the world fall apart always cheers me up. 

Jenn, if you loved CRASH LANDING ON YOU, I highly recommend DESCENDANTS OF THE SUN, which you can stream on Viki Rakuten for free, with ads, or on Amazon with a trial subscription to Kocowa. I was glued to the screen.

Red readers, how about you?

Happy Easter

 RHYS BOWEN:  It's Easter Sunday so I'm keeping this brief today as I'm sure many of you are going to brunch or church or to relatives. In England we nevre made a big thing of Easter. We were bought a couple of chocolate eggs. We went to church. One thing I remember is that we always dressed nicely in summery outfits only to find the inside of the church was frigid. 

But when I was growing up there was no Easter Bunny, no Easter egg hunt. One Easter I was staying with my parents when my older children were 2 and 4. I gave them an Easter egg hunt on the back lawn. I remember the neighbors staring out of their window as flung eggs all over the garden. I thought I'd gone mad. 

The one tradition I created with my own kids was to give each of them an Easter basket and to hide them. Each child got a trail of clues to lead them to their basket. Each clue was a rhyming couplet:

Where birds make nests look up and see

A clue awaits you in a ....."

Tree, they'd shout and off they'd run. I had four kids, about six clues each. That's twenty four rhyming couplets to be written and hidden around the house before six on Easter morning. The interesting thing is that the tradition has continued to my grand kids. Lizzie and Meghan wanted their baskets with clues until they were in college! I wonder if it will go on to the next generation?

So what Easter traditions do you have? And for my Jewish friends I hope you've had a blessed Passover. 

Thoughts on New York

 RHYs BOWEN:  Next week I'm going to New York for the Edgars. I haven't been in a couple of years. I can't say I miss it. I'm not a big city person. I like nature and quiet. But as cities go, New York has everything. It's a true city. Not a boring, bleak financial district and then suburbs and malls like many American cities. I probably won't do much when I'm there, as I have endless meals scheduled, but I may pop down to Greenwich Village where Molly hangs out. And if the weather is kind I'll certainly want to walk in Central Park. This is me in Patchin Place where Molly lives!

i've assembled some of the reasons why I like New York:

Since I’ve been an observer of New York, I’ve had a chance to detail what I like about it. Here are my top ten reasons for liking the city:

 

1.         It is a true city where living, working, eating, shopping all take place on the same block. In other cities the commercial areas are dead after working hours. Not so New York. It lives twenty four hours a day.

2.         Life is not confined to buildings. It spills out onto sidewalks and into parks. At the first sign of spring, tables and umbrellas come out onto sidewalks, people take their food into parks. They sit outside the public library playing chess. There are impromptu jazz bands and barbershop quartets in the subway at Grand Central and outdoor concerts in Central Park.

3.         It is a city of artwork. There are mosaics in the subway stations—my favorite is the Alice in Wonderland motif at 50th Street. Look up and you’ll see Egyptian temples, art deco medallions, Greek columns and marble frescos, sometimes eight or ten floors above ground level. For whom were the art deco goddesses and marble pediments intended? Certainly not the pedestrians who walk below and never look up as they hurry to the nearest subway. Not always the inhabitants of buildings opposite as some of them face blank walls. I like to think of them as a little offering to the gods above.

4.         It is a city of good smells. Every block has at least one good aroma wafting out of a café, or from a sidewalk cart—roasting coffee, frying onions, curry, sesame oil, baking bread. Luckily New Yorkers have to walk so much or they’d all be fat.

5.         New York is a city of dogs. They are not much in evidence during the day, unless one encounters a dog walker, being dragged down Fifth Avenue by six or seven of her charges. But early evening, the dogs come out, each with his accompanying human, whom he often resembles in stature and walk. Interestingly enough, there are more big dogs than small. You would have thought that dachshunds and yorkies would have been ideal for city life, but I see more golden retrievers and labs and standard poodles, even Afghan hounds. New Yorkers are well trained too. Not a speck of poop in sight on the sidewalks.

6.         It is a city of cheap eats and cheap shops. There are coffee shops all over where two dollars will buy an egg roll and coffee for breakfast. Even sushi bars offer two for one on weeknights. And T shirts with the famous I love NY slogan on them are now two for ten dollars. Of course I also saw a T shirt for three hundred dollars in Bloomies, so I have to say also that New York is…

7.         …a city of contrasts. On the bus old ladies from the upper East Side wearing tired looking furs and smelling of face powder and moth balls sit next to young men in baggy pants, gang colors and caps worn backward. Sometimes they look at each other and smile.

The hot dog cart on the street is only a few steps away from the most pretentious tea salon in the universe. Their tea menu is twelve pages long. When I ask for a Darjeeling, I am directed to a page full of Darjeelings and a First Flush, Robertson Estate is recommended. I am so tempted to take a sip, look indignant and exclaim, “You’ve brought me a second flush, you imposter!”

8.         It is a city of haste. Everything in New York is done quickly. People leap from sidewalks to snare cabs. They run down subway steps. They inch out into traffic and anticipate the Walk sign by a good two seconds. In  Bryant Park outside the library men play chess at breakneck speed. Knight to bishop two-ding, and the timer bell is slapped, Queen to rook four-ding. The whole game is over in five minutes. A crowd of men stands around, watching.

9.         It is also a city of quiet corners in which time stands still. There is a fair being held in a churchyard with home baked cookies and crocheted potholders. I once got locked, by mistake, in Gramercy park, which is the only private square in the city when I had stayed at the Gramercy Park hotel and gone there to regroup in the calm of nature. In Central Park proud moms and darker skinned nannies watch light skinned children play in the sand or climb the rocks. It is easy to get lost in Central Park, easy to forget that you are in a city at all.

10.  And most surprisingly for one who has visited New York for the past thirty years---it is a city of friendly people. Everything changed after 9/11. These days people chat as they wait for buses. They see tourists puzzling over maps and ask if they need help. Bus drivers actually call out the name of streets intelligibly and answer questions when asked. A minor miracle has occurred—the one good by-product of a 9/11 that touched every New York life and forged and strengthened it with fire.

I'll be staying at the Marriott Marquis which has the scariest elevators in the world. All glass and plunge down forty something floors in seconds!

View from my hotel room last time here! 

So are you a fan of New York? What do you like about it? Hate about it?