Now that the dark days have stalked and superseded the winter solstice, I turn all the lights on while I read on the comfy sofa. 

I call this book-and-light therapy, and it goes well with a hot cup of tea or coffee. This weekend I have been perusing two comfort books under bright lights, The Penguin Book of Women’s Humor (1996), edited  by Regina Barreca, and The Lady Investigates:  Women Detectives & Spies in Fiction (1981) , by Patricia Craig and Mary Codogan. 

First, let me say that The Lady Investigates is the better of the two books.   In fact, it is an exceptionally smart literary history.  Craig and Cadogan are a mother-daughter team who  have written a fascinating study of Miss Marple and her predecessors and descendants.

The book begins in the nineteenth century with Mrs. Paschal in The Revelations of a Lady Detective ( anonymously published in 1861 and later attributed to W. S. Hayward). Then they move on to the brilliant Valeria Woodville in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady (1875).  I took notes as I read, because there are so many mysteries I’d never heard of. The history extends to the late 1970s,  featuring  Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax books (1960s and ‘70s), Joyce Porter’s The Hon Con series (beginning  in 1973),  Amanda Cross’s Kate Fansler series (also beginning in the 1970s), and P. D. James’s incomparable mysteries. 

And then there’s The Penguin Book of Women’s Humor, edited by Regina Barreca. I wanted to love it. I loved parts of it. There are passages from Cynthia Heimel’s humor columns, the playwright Jean Kerr’s domestic humor columns, Lynda Barry’s cartoons, and and Lisa  Alther’s witty novel, Kinflicks. But Barreca also includes – hold your breath – scenes from the Brontes’ novels, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights, Shirley, Villette, and  Jane Eyre.

What was Penguin thinking?  The  Brontes are witty and not without humor, but that is not humor writing.  I was equally astonished to find scenes from Margaret Drabble’s The Waterfall  and a weak story by Doris Lessing, “How I lost My Heart.”   Do the poems by  Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore fit with Irma Bombeck and Anita Loos?  No. Gentle wit?  Yes.  Great literature? Yes.  Humor writing?  No. 

Still, there are some gems.  The columns from Cynthia Heimel’s  If You Can’t Live without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet? and Enough about You still make me laugh out loud. I am also a great fan of Roz Chast. I had forgotten about the brilliant, funny Mimi Pond. And I discovered some new-to-me humorists: Anne Beatts, Serena Gray, and Libby Reid.

There’s something for everybody here: comfort books for dark days.