This isn’t a book you read in one sitting - or if you do, it won’t be in the way you read a novel. The Comfort Book is a companion. A patchwork of thoughts, quotes, affirmations, and little reminders that it’s okay to feel lost, okay to need gentleness, okay to begin again.

I reached for this on a quiet afternoon, when everything felt just a little bit too much and I’m glad I did. It doesn’t try to be profound or polished. It’s not hiding behind big ideas. Instead, it offers a steady voice in the dark. A hand on your shoulder. A reminder that being human is messy and hard, and that we’re allowed to sit with that truth without fixing it all at once.

Some entries resonated deeply. Others drifted by more softly, like clouds - not untrue, just not meant for me in that moment. But I think that’s part of the beauty: The Comfort Book meets you where you are, and will likely meet you differently next time.

It’s the kind of book I’ll keep by my bedside, or in my bag for train journeys, or next to the kettle on quiet mornings. A collection of comforts — imperfect, but offered with care.

Favourite quote:
"You don’t have to be positive. You just have to be you. And that is enough."

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4 stars)
Simple, sincere, and best read slowly. A book to return to when your inner voice needs a softer one beside it.

Not everything on my original list has made it into my hands yet — and honestly, some books have started singing a little louder than others. Here’s what’s still calling me most clearly, and what I might swap in depending on where the mood takes me.

📚 Still on the Stack
(in no particular order — just as they tug at me)

🌸 I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
A sun-dappled reread I’ve been saving for exactly this sort of summer. There’s something about the charm and longing of Cassandra’s world that always calls me back — crumbling castles, diary entries, growing pains, and that aching sense of becoming. I can already smell the wildflowers.

🔎 The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
This one feels like a perfect weekend choice — light but clever, funny but full of heart. I’ve been meaning to finally meet this crew of unlikely detectives, and I think I’m ready for something that blends mystery with warmth.

🎨 Still Life by Sarah Winman
This has been waiting patiently for just the right moment. It’s lush and sprawling, full of art and olive trees, Florence and found family. It's the sort of book to get lost in slowly, so I may save it for the end of the month when I can read without rushing.

🎻 Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
A wild card that keeps calling louder and louder. Queer found family, a violin prodigy, intergalactic deals, and a donut shop — it sounds like nothing I’ve read before, and everything I might love. If I need something both tender and cosmic, this will be it.

✨ Might-Swap-In
Depending on the mood (or the weather), I might find myself reaching for:

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson – for its quiet, briny beauty and gentle rhythm of days
Foster by Claire Keegan – if I want something brief but deep, like a held breath
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki – if I’m craving something big, strange, and lyrical

What’s still waiting on your July stack? And what’s calling you most as the month begins its slow slide toward August?

Let me know below — I love hearing what people are reading, and even more, what they’re saving for the right moment.

Inspired by The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, this list gathers books that explore survival in its many forms: emotional, physical, spiritual. These are stories of solitude, transformation, and the quiet strength it takes to begin again — especially when everything has been stripped away.

Whether memoir or fiction, each of these books holds something of the path: the stillness of wild places, the grief of loss, the stubborn act of hope.

📖 Memoirs of Healing in Nature

1. I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice
A luminous memoir of love and wild swimming, written by a woman whose husband is living with motor neurone disease. The sea becomes both sanctuary and metaphor — for resilience, surrender, and joy in the moment.

2. The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
Returning to the remote Orkney Islands after a battle with addiction, Liptrot’s writing captures the raw beauty of nature and the messiness of healing. Atmospheric, electric, and deeply solitary.

3. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
A haunting look at Christopher McCandless’s decision to leave society behind. It’s a meditation on freedom, recklessness, and what it means to live authentically — even at great cost.

4. Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World by Scott Harrison
A very different sort of journey — this one from nightclub promoter to humanitarian. A memoir of purpose-finding, faith, and a new kind of pilgrimage.

5. A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter
Written in the 1930s, this quiet classic tells of a year spent in near-complete isolation in the Arctic. Stark, spare, and unexpectedly luminous.

🌾 Fiction Rooted in Solitude, Journey, and Rediscovery

1. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
A gentle but profound novel about an elderly man who sets off on foot across England to deliver a letter. What begins as a small act of penance becomes a transformative journey.

2. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Part mystery, part ode to the natural world, this novel follows a girl who grows up alone in the marshes of North Carolina. An atmospheric, slow-blooming story of strength and longing.

3. Matrix by Lauren Groff
Set in 12th-century England, this is a fierce and haunting novel about a woman cast out of royal court who creates a sanctuary of female power in an isolated abbey. A story of vision, resistance, and strange, sacred solitude.

4. Euphoria by Lily King
Though set in the humid wilds of Papua New Guinea, this novel carries the ache of intellectual solitude and the vulnerability of deep, transient connections.

5. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
A novella that captures quiet courage in the face of silence and complicity. Its brevity only amplifies its emotional weight — a masterclass in understated transformation.

🌬 Themes That Echo the Path

• 🌿 Healing through Nature
• 🥾 Walking as Transformation
• 🫧 Quiet Courage & Solitude
• 🔦 Rediscovery After Loss
• 🌀 The Long Process of Becoming

Whether you're drawn to coastlines or inner landscapes, these books offer companionship for your own journey — wherever you may be walking.

I’ve always believed that the act of re-reading is a kind of quiet magic. Not just revisiting a story but revisiting yourself in it. Who you were when you first read the book. What you needed from it then. What you see now, with different eyes, older hands.

Re-reading Call Me By Your Name was like reopening a memory I didn’t realise I’d tucked away so carefully. The sun-soaked days, the ripe fruit and aching desire. It all came rushing back, but differently. Softer, maybe. More shadowed. More aware of what’s left unsaid.

There’s comfort in this returning. In knowing a line is coming and feeling its weight anyway. In noticing something you missed the first time, or feeling your heart catch where once it didn’t. Re-reads don’t just survive time - they stretch and deepen in it.

And sometimes, we re-read because we want to remember how it felt to be cracked open by a sentence. Or because we’re searching for something we can’t quite name. Or simply because we miss a character, a mood, a place... and want to go back.

Some books become part of our emotional architecture. Call Me By Your Name is one of mine. Yours might be different. But the invitation is the same: come back. See what waits for you now.

🐚 Would love to hear:

• Do you re-read often?
• What books have changed for you on re-reading?
• Are there stories you return to every summer, or when you need to feel held?