Customer Reviews

The Comfort Book

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I have to admit that I usually approach books like this with skepticism. So many of them are full of sugary sentimentality. But Jane Seskin's Comfort Book is different. She has had the intelligence to ask real people what they find comforting, and how they offer comfort to others.

The result is a collection of responses that are usually helpful, sometimes funny, and never too sentimental. The people in this book - who have all had a lot of pain in their lives - find comfort in everything from Big Band music to cats, and from cleaning the floor to meditation. The sheer number of comforting suggestions is comforting it itself. There really is something here for everybody.

The Comfort Book is divided into practical sections: "Things," "Places," "Music," "Animals" and so on. Jane Seskin, who describes herself as a "Psychotherapist, writer, earth mother and coach," has included pages for personal notes, and a comfort balance sheet.

The Comfort Book is a perfect gift for your anxious friends and relatives this Holiday Season, or at any other season. Comfort is never out of style.

David Bouchier
Author and NPR Commentator

Reading "The Comfort Book" is a strange and wonderful experience. As I encountered, one after another, the descriptions by people of the methods by which they find comfort in difficult times, I felt myself drawn to that core level of humanity that one discovers in the deepest moments of insight. In a world that is so loud and fast and sometimes isolating, it's easy to lose sight of the simple need to be soothed, the soft side of us all. This beautiful book shines its light on that basic yearning. From now on, one of my own sources of comfort will be to turn to this book.