That thing where you are recovering from a busy trip out of town, an illness, your work inbox after you come back from vacation days and sick days, and you find yourself checking out a book you just read not six months ago, a book you’ve already read twice now, a book you don’t even entirely think you believe in.

And then you realize you have a comfort book. Probably more than one. Maybe they have something in common – an author, a genre, a time of your life when you first discovered them. A time when you were discovering many things about the world and your place in it, a time when your head felt cracked open and everything you read poured right inside. Maybe there’s something about the words and how they sound in your head as you read them, even if the cadence is a cross between a fairy distant memoir and an academic paper. Pop psychology. Lady memoir. Women making changes in their lives and the world, sharing their stories with you in a way that says “you can do this too.”

When you are well, you’ll go somewhere else: to your teetering to-read stack, to a book you read in grade school, or a dippy romance you’ve read a dozen times, or maybe something shinier, newer, with complex ideas and sentence structure, written for grown-ups even. These books will be there when you are well. For now, you can just read and re-read and re-read your re-reads.

Oh, these books.