‘Tis the season for the classics. There is something about cold, wet weather that drives me to seek books that are familiar, warm and inviting.

A few weeks before Christmas I go in search of my copy of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. The cover is red, the illustrations delightful and the pages inside are worn and softened by age. Granted, it is not all that cozy of a story, but the familiarity of the tale brings me comfort.

Here are some titles I have recently read that go back a few years and/or have some classic themes:

“Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare” by E. Nesbit

“My Antonia” by Willa Cather

“Castle D’Or” by Daphne Du Maurier

“Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” by Elizabeth Taylor

I must warn you, readers, they do not all have happy endings; however the timeframe in which they are written has a certain charm of its own that seems sadly lacking in today’s “literary fiction.”

Kitsap Regional Library has a great new collection of their popular Books 2 Go section that is appropriately titled Classics 2 Go. It consists of some time-honored titles that are on most of the local high school reading lists. Now you have the time, patience and initiative to want to read these AND I’m guessing you can sit still longer too!

Hmm. Books and comfort, comfort and (what else!) … food. While at the library looking for soup cookbooks, I came upon an entire book devoted to recipes for stuffing. Yep, just stuffing. Entitled “Mrs. Cubbison’s Best Stuffing Cookboo” by Leo Pearlstein and Lisa Messinger, this was a find! It boasts recipes covering everything from sausage to sage to cranberries and back again. Yum. You can round out your culinary ‘classics’ by also taking a look at some periodicals such as Cooking Light, Martha Stewart’s Living, Cook’s Illustrated and even Oprah who weighs in with an article titled “How Not to Feel like a Stuffed Turkey.” The possibilities are endless!

Are you too sleepy to read? Try a classic seasonal film such as “Holiday Inn” made in 1942 with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. It will have you singing along and possibly dancing, in no time at all. When I was young (and even into adulthood) my Aunt Ev would hear Bing, stop what she was doing at the moment, grab me and proceed to waltz around the kitchen for a full five minutes. Now that was a classic moment.

Happy Holidays and Happy Reading!