Sick Day Reads.

For the past week, I've been feeling fairly awful with the cold that seems to have swept everyone. After the stress of a dissertation hand-in, and then the further stress of getting a new job involving a big move, my immune system flipped me off and said, 'no more lady.' So I've been spending my days in bed with books (at the moment, Zadie Smith's NW which I've unleashed as a big treat to myself.)

Some books have the same effect as a big dose of Beecham's: clearing your head, giving you a little relief for a while. For me, its Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, which I first read at fourteen, and have read more times than I can count since. It's a great read in particular for teenage girls: I've tried to convince my sister to read it - the most frustrating endeavour of my life. The story is narrated by Cassandra Mortmain, seventeen at the start, who lives with her eccentric artisan family in a crumbling castle in Suffolk.

There's something so comforting about it: there's rain, there's numbing cold, there's a lot of sipping tea and snuggling into layers upon layers of clothes. Most of the novel is perpetual winter.  Eventually, towards the novel's conclusion, the cold melts away to spring. It's not quite wish fulfillment; its outlook is far too damp and bleak. But it's a beautiful snapshot of uncomfortable, chilly Britain, that perversely makes me feel better. Does that make sense?

In fact, I'm going to dig it out now. And if you're unlucky like me in suffering, snuggle down to your I Capture the Castle. I'd also suggest Scandinavian crime fiction, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson and Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. 

What are your ill books?