Can anyone recommend a really comforting book?

[PumpkinWitch]

I am looking for something really nice to read that is not upsetting. I am doing the freedom program at the moment so anything about domestic abuse or with a lot of violence is too much for me.

I have been reading all the call the midwife books which I enjoyed. My grandma was a midwife at that time.

It can be fiction or non fiction. I don’t really like sci-fi (apart from Douglas Adams) but I enjoy lots of different types of books.

Total comfort reads - almost anything by Lucy Dillon. They are the literary equivalent of hot chocolate. I read Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts first but The Secret of Happy Ever After is my favourite. (You can tell by the names that they are utter trash but such good 'cosy' reads!)

I capture the castle-Dodi Smith
The Mitford books - Jan Karon
Stevenson (J K?)
Elizabeth Goudge (almost anything but particularly The Dean's Watch)
Anthony Trollope
LM Montgomery
Miss Read
Chalet School
Gerald Durrell
Antonia Forest, Abbey Girls, Noel Streatfield
Lilian Beckswith
Miss Tim, Diary of a Provincial Lady
My animals and other family
Wes

Georgette Heyer

The Yorkshire Shepherdess books are easy to read and often funny.

When god was a rabbit and the lido

Major Pettigrews Last Stand is lovely, also echo Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers.

Mr Rosemblum's List by Natasha Solomons is fabulous.

The pursuit of happiness by Douglas Kennedy, a beautiful moving story that has stayed with me many years after I read it. (Nothing to do with the film version).

Not the Cazalets, I keep seeing them recommended as comforting. I started them due to that only to find child abuse in the first book.
I second Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, and Maeve Binchy.
If you've been reading call the midwife the older Maeve Binchys will be in a similar time period.
The Lilac Bush or Circle of Friends are gentle.

Paw prints in the moonlight is lovely

Miss Pettigrew lives for a day
Anything by Georgette Heyer
For comfort, children's book style, The Velveteen Rabbit.

Try Fannie Flagg books. A Redbird Christmas epitomises comfort reading to me.
Maybe not Fried Green Tomatoes as that has elements of dv but most of her books are easy to read and good hearted.

Btw I would avoid ‘Elizabeth is missing’ recommended by an earlier poster. It is a lovely book but there is dv at its core.

Evening Class by Maeve Binchy. Gorgeous book. Funny and poignant and heart warming.

Another for I capture the castle by Dodie Smith.
I also find Agatha Christie books comforting 🤓

Another recommendation for Diary Of A Provincial Lady. It’s funny, beautifully written and very easy to read.

If you are at all interested in non-fiction, I really enjoyed Becoming by Michelle Obama. She writes beautifully and it tells the story of her childhood, courtship, and marriage, along with the political story, from a strong woman's perspective.

And I am not American.

I agree with James Herriot, Gerald Durrell, Eva Ibbotsen and Elizabeth Goudge (my favourite is The Little White Horse).

Ballet Shoes is one of my comfort reads, as is The Girls in the Velvet Frame by Adele Geras.

I also love re-reading stuff like A Traveller in Time or A Stitch in Time. Love those time slip stories.

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher, Coming Home by the same author. September and a Week in Winter. All lovely comforting books. Maeve Binchy, everything ever written by her. Marcia Willett, has a similar style. Those Who Serve, Looking Forward, Holding On, The Courtyard. All about families and how people are and can be absorbed into other people's lives. Just beautiful and so lovely to read.

Anything and everything by Georgette Heyer.

So many good ones on this thread: Cold Comfort Farm; Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day; I Capture the Castle.

I would love to be able to read them all for the first time again!

I really liked the Thursday Murder Club but it made me sob!

When i need something really really gentle I turn to Lillian Harry's Burracombe series. Not her April Grove wartime ones which are occasionally upsetting. They are... a particular type of book I suppose. I also read Erica James which are so gentle I can't remember much about them except they were comforting.

@Fuckingcrustybread Shellseekers was my immediate thought too with this brief.

The Dean's Watch by Elizabeth Goudge

The Help by Katherine Stockitt

The Shellseekers and ComingHome by Rosamunde Pilcher are my go to books for comfort. They’re a hug in a book!

Another one here James Herriot.