Please or to access all these features

What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

I'm so down right now, please help me find a book to read

134 replies

adaptiveness · 16/09/2021 11:28

I'm not going into the details, but I'm not in a good place right now and I badly need a good book.

I have 5 mins to write this, so am going to be really unreasonable and just list the stuff that I can't deal with reading about right now.

No sex, suicide, romance, bad stuff happening to kids, sad endings, books that will make me think about the fucked up state of the world. No kooky, random, wet, indecisive protagonists. No 'hilarious' bad parenting.

Any genre fine: fiction, literature, sci-fi, fantasy, non-fiction, historical, comedy, biography, sport. Whatever. I just need to disappear into a good book.

Please help!

OP posts:
Acunningruse · 16/09/2021 14:51

Elinor Oliphant is completely fine
The Hynpotists Love Story
His Perfect Wife by Natasha Bell - best book I read last year
Doing Time by Jodi something- if you don't mind v light sci-fi a v easy read

lazylinguist · 16/09/2021 14:50

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Long, adventurous fantasy book, and my favourite book in the world! It has a sequel (A Wise Man's Fear) and will eventually have a (long-awaited) third and final book. It's not totally without romance, but it's not mournful, maudlin or soppy at all.

October2020 · 16/09/2021 14:42

The Art of Not Falling Apart - Christina Patterson.

mrs12345 · 16/09/2021 14:41

Miss Benson's Beetle

frogface69 · 16/09/2021 14:40

The Fairacre books by Miss Read are my comfort in dark times.

futureghost · 16/09/2021 14:39

The Diary of a Nobody I find this actually quite a sad book.

Personally, I love the Calvin and Hobbs comic books by Bill Waterson. They really make me laugh.

MaudTheInvincible · 16/09/2021 14:35

PG Wodehouse, Stella Gibbons, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, EM Delafield

CMOTDibbler · 16/09/2021 14:30

Mrs Harris goes to Paris
Witches Abroad (Terry Pratchett)

Sometimes a childrens book does it for me as well - Ann of Green Gables for instance or an Angela Brazil. Everythings safe and warm and not a challenging read

SailYourShips · 16/09/2021 14:26

Old comfort reads for me are The Diary of a Nobody and the Mapp and Lucia novels by E.F. Benson. They've got me through many a crying and bleak day.

Hope you come through whatever is making things dark.