When I need to clear my head, laugh, and get completely lost in another world, I can do the entire (waaaaah!!! ONLY) season of Firefly. Joss Whedon is the man, Nathan Fillion is the other man, and... well dammit, BROWNCOATS FOREVER! Nuff said. (I own, love, but avoid Serenity, because it makes me cry snot out my nose.)
One late spring I was very sick with cancer, had no hair, no eyebrows, and no eyelashes. I'd lost so much weight my skin was like paper. Ahmed took me to Maine, and while neither of us said it-- neither of us was sure I'd make it through the long weekend. I was in a great deal of pain and had lost all my fight. Out of pure need to feel GOOD about something I sat down with the entire (at that time) Bridgerton series by Julia Quin. I began reading in the bedroom. Moved downstairs, near sunlight. Finished on the gazebo at the end of the dock. These books saved my life. For real. I was eating and had passed through the pain by the end of the third day.
I've probably re-read Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion a million times. I own all three original paperbacks, the omnibus trade that is so unwieldy it leaves my hands aching (pictured), and now have the over-priced ebooks because her publisher can't keep me from Paks! Strong heroine who is both broken and redeemed in the arch; amazing world-building with a powerful Tolkien taste; true bildungsroman high-fantasy at its pure-escapist best.
When I have a real fight with Ahmed-- yes, it happens, even if it happens rarely-- I want to read about a romance, but I don't want to read romance. Make sense? If not, go find Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince trilogy and read it. These are big, thick, spend-a-week-or-more-with-them volumes of amazing world building, but the strength of the novels is the incredibly strong and perfectly crafted relationships between both the primary-lead couple (Rohan and Sioned) and many of the secondary couples, too. I remember, as I read, why it's GOOD that we fight. We respect one another. We have strong personalities. We love deeply and fiercely, and fight just as deeply and fiercely because of this... which is a good thing. I've worn out several copies of this series, too!
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Love and hugs.
I think of you whenever I hear Patti Page's Old Cape Cod and Groove Armada's At the River. :)
Watching the Pirates of the Caribbean 2x in a row will do it for me.
When I'm depressed, I watch Blade Runner.
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