Themis-Athena's Garden of Books

Task: List / tell us about your favorite rainy day reads.

Any- and everything that -- with or without a mug of hot tea and some chocolate or other snacks -- makes me feel all warm and comfortable (while still engaging my brain cells, at least on occasion):

* Golden Age mysteries, particularly my favorites by Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Ngaio Marsh (as well as, more recently, Patricia Wentworth, Josephine Tey, John Dickson Carr -- and on the other side of the Pond, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series).

* P.D. James's Inspector Dalgliesh and Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series.

* Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael series, C.J. Sansom's Shardlake books, and other historical fiction favorites. 

* Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

* J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.

* Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

* Jane Austen's novels, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and North and South, E.M. Forster's Howards End, and Barbara Pym's Excellent Women.

* Even some grittier stuff, as long as it mentally takes me to a place that -- literarily or in real life -- I consider "home" (looking at you, Inspector Rebus and Harry Bosch).

* And this time of the year, of course, most of the books on my Christmas Reading list!