So autumn is coming up soon. Since as we all know that it is the comfiest most patrician season, that also makes it the peak time to enjoy good books.
What are some great autumn books that perfectly complement the season? Whether through the feels it gives, nature oriented, etc.
Bonus points for poetry.
Huysmann's La Bas
Meryinck's Golem
Walden, Henry Adams' Mt. St. Michel and Chartres, Flaubert's A Sentimental Education....
All top tier comfy, except perhaps Walden which I find so, nonetheless.
I'm going to be rereading the anatomy of melancholy.
And frost's North of Boston.
I literally can't imagine reading Anatomy anywhere but at home, at night. It really is comfy in the sense of shutting out the loud, modern world around you and reveling in, while studying, the past. There's a really great quotation in it about some European librarian who "shut the door to vice" when he sat down to read in peace; will post the passage when I get home.
"To Autumn" by Keats
Give me a quick rundown on Anatomy of Melancholy. I've heard of it before, but is it just random thoughts or is there an overall theme to it?
>winter
>not aesthetic af
Shame on you, anons.
Have an old 3vol Nelson's Classics (the Scottish Everyman) edition of this and read it late night summer evenings (through July) a few years back. Sheer magic. But I lived in northernmost Vermont then.
>this for the most part is the humour of us all, to be discontent, miserable, and most unhappy, as we think at least; and show me him that is not so, or that ever was otherwise.
It's not so much what the book is about that makes it great (although it is extremely interesting), but how it is written. It is the peak of English prose.
Burton essentially write about the human condition of melancholy in all its forms, complete with symptoms, prognostics and cures from all the history of the world (up to the 17th century). It is packed with history, medical science, anecdotes and whatever other tangent comes his mind.
If you don't know Latin make sure to get an edition with footnotes/translations as he quotes Latin authors on what feels like every page.
You can't read outside in the winter
will be reading this closer to halloween. also live in a small new england town so adds to the comfiness
Since it's getting so much praise in this thread I'll have to bump it to the top of my list. Thanks for the recommendation.
I read outside in the winter all the time. It is so quiet and comfy.
t.Canadian
Love his stuff, even the biographies. Only twice before have I seen him referenced on this board and I've been on and off it near a decade. Good stuff, user.
His Christmas writings are also top-tier
De Retz's Memoirs, St. Simon's, Ruskin's The Stones of Venice-- all old top tier comfy and informative feasts.
I liked that bonfires on the moor on Guy Fawkes Night at the beginning of Return of the Native. Something about woodsmoke and cider is comfy as fuck
All through hs I was in love with Eustacia Vye. Great book, great novelist. And upcoming the perfect weather. Fine choice.
I had a similar problem for months where I'd see it in bookshelf threads but fucking nobody on lit could give me a real, personal synopsis of what the book was about or what it was like. After stumbling on a few excerpts I decided to dive in and am happy I did.
The general idea is . Burton takes an outdated but genuinely scientific approach to what we would now call depression. He leans on tons of ancient but also contemporary history for anecdotes and quotes, the bible is quoted constantly and christianity is hugely significant, not just as a source of stories but, as he believes, as a succor to those in pain.
>Thou art here vexed in this world; but say to thyself, "Why are thou troubled, O my soul?" Is not God better to thee than all temporalities, and momentary pleasures of the world? be the pacified. And though thou beest now peradventure in extreme want, it may be 'tis for thy further good, to try thy patience, as it did Job's, and exercise thee in this life: trust in God, and rely upon Him, and thou shalt be crowned in the end. What's this life to eternity?...God is a spectator of all thy miseries, He sees thy wrongs, woes, and wants..."Rejoice not against me, O my enemy; for though I fall, I shall rise: when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall lighten me."
With that said, it doesn't stray into platitudes. It reads as though Burton himself were/had been depressed, so he empathizes and acknowledges that sometimes faith isn't enough, and that depression is a very real and human pain. One of the best sections is about suicide, which he does not condone or approve of, but recognizes as possibly "good" and sometimes necessary:
>Out of the anguish and vexation of their souls, [men] offer violence to themselves...They seek at last, finding no comfort, no remedy in this wretched life, to be eased of all by death...There remains no more to such persons, if that heavenly Physician, by His assisting grace and mercy alone, do not prevent (for no human persuasion or art can help), but to be their own butchers...One day of grief is an hundred years...a cruel torture of the soul, a most inexplicable grief, poisoned worm, consuming body and soul and gnawing the very heart, a perpetual executioner, a continual night...a plague of the soul, the cramp and convulsion of the soul; an epitome of hell, and if there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man's heart.
>Seneca well adviseth: be justly offended with [the suicide[ as he was a murderer, but pity him now as a dead man. Thus of their goods and bodies we can dispose; but what shall become of their souls, God alone can tell; His mercy may come betwixt the bridge and the brook, the knife and the throat. What happens to someone may happen to anyone. Who knows how he may be tempted? It is his case, it may be thine. We ought not to be so rash and rigorous in our censures as some are; charity will judge and hope the best; God be merciful unto us all!
Quick followup: I think it’s also necessary to mention that as much as Burton explores the ins and outs of depression, he is throughout the book committed to curing it. By no means (maybe in spite of the excerpts I chose) is it a glorification of depression or suicide. He wants to help, thinks that depression CAN be helped, and does his best to show people the path to helping themselves and others.
>Dum spiras, spera
>[While thou breathest, hope]
PS I found that passage I mentioned above:
>Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden in Holland..."I no sooner" (saith he) "come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet content that I pity all our great ones and rich men that know not this happiness."
>Being warm af while directly exposing onself to harsh and unforgiving elements
Niggaz ain't cozy brodie
Well I don't read in a blizzard my man, but on a calm day with a wintersun at about ten below zero (celsius) it is very comfy.
Then, after a couple hours coming in to a hot drink adds to the comfort.
>Bonus points for poetry
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
I've got The Turn of the Screw, The Man Who Was Thursday, and Q by Luther Blissett lined up. Am I in for some comfy thrills and spooks?
Autumn is not comfy. It's wet and cold where I live. Only respite are fresh roasted chestnuts.
Turn is amazing, Thursday is like a Bach: there are no rests. Looks good to me, though be warned that Thursday is perhaps the least comfy work of truly one of the most comfy authors.
Hawthorne, Emerson, Adams, late James, Wharton. American Civil War lit has a Fall feel.