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Original poster

Recommendations for comforting reads please

83 replies

Colefra · 18/11/2025 15:43

I'm struggling with very frustrating insomnia. I wake at around 4a.m. I pick up my Kindle and reading helps keep those anxious, dark thoughts away at that time. It's dark, it's cold so I need some comforting, cosy reads for that time in the morning.

OP posts:
OneBookTooMany · 18/11/2025 18:42

E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia books-a lighter, more bitchy Jane Austen in 1920s/30s Sussex with various social plotting.

If you have been put off by the clumsy TV series, don't let it stop you from turning to these little bubbles of joy.

However, if you do want to watch a TV series that captures it- then the original 1980s programme starring Prunella Scales, Nigel Hawthorne and Geraldine McEwan are on YouTube.

berlinbaby2025 · 18/11/2025 18:18

84 Charing Cross Road.

MagdaLenor · 18/11/2025 16:27

Maeve Binchy

DrEmilyCrabtree · 18/11/2025 16:21

For a decent but easy read I like Debbie Johnson's Comfort Food Cafe series. Also some Milly Johnson - i particularly enjoyed I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday and The Magnificent Mrs Maisel.

MagdaLenor · 18/11/2025 15:52

Lark Rise to Candleford
Little Women
The James Herriot books

Blackcountryexile · 18/11/2025 15:50

Miss Read. Stories about villages and small towns where everybody and everything is lovely.
I find cosy mysteries, where everything works out by the end but that may not be what you're looking for.

FizzingAda · 18/11/2025 15:50

Have you ever read the 'Miss Read' books? Many were set in a village called Fairacre, in the cotswolds Imthink, and she was a schoolmistress, probably in the first half of the twentieth century. Village doings, interesting characters, gentle books. She wrote lots in a similar vein.
another set starts with the Sea for Breaksfast, by Lilian Beckwith. After an illness she goes to,live on an island in western Scotland, seven books Ithink, and all the great characters and doings. Loved them.

Thisismyusernametoday1 · 18/11/2025 15:47

I found both novels from Sangu Mandanna such wholesome, cosy fantasy reads.