Escapism List, what books for a seaside holiday cottage bookshelf?

[snowspider]

Fiction or non-fiction, children or adults.

I don't have the holiday cottage yet but in anticipation dreaming up a list.

I have a few children's books on my list; Swallows and Amazons, The Dark is Rising Trilogy, The Owl Service. Moomin books.

The Hidden Hut Cornish recipe book. The Salt Path Raynor Winn.

Plot 29 Allan Jenkins.

The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen

The first couple of Jodi Taylor books

Eleanor Oliphant is absolutely fine

Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day

Summer at sea - Katie Fforde
It's raining men - Milly Johnson
The little wedding shop by the sea - Jane Linfoot
(I'm a chick lit addict!)

Mariana - Monica Dickens
My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell
The Little White Horse - Elizabeth Goudge

Any Mary Wesley novel

I think you need a wide range. I hate chick lit. Pre Kindle I once stayed in a cottage where The Shell Seekers was on the bookshelf and I read it. It was dire. But I get that other people feel differently.

I like books about politics and political biographies when I'm on holiday as I can spend time focusing on them which I can't do in real life.

My husband likes nature books - think Robert McFarlane, Melissa Harrison etc.

I'd also put in a couple of thrillers, as people seem to like those.

Depending on where the cottage is, maybe a novel set in that area?

A couple of classic Agatha Christie mystery novels. Murder on the Orient Express and The Mysterious Affair at Styles would be my preference.

Jilly Cooper. I always want to read Jilly on holiday.

I’ve got a range of things including biographies, thrillers and. A book about 1970s toys!

A couple of area specific ones would be good. E.g Whitby = Dracula.

@ssd

Eleanor Oliphant is absolutely fine

Love this book!

The Night Circus is a great one to get lost in.

Twisty turny psychological thriller type books - they fill time very well if it's rainy!

Death by the Seaside - A Lady Hardcastle Mystery

@TheWoollybacksWife

A couple of classic Agatha Christie mystery novels. Murder on the Orient Express and The Mysterious Affair at Styles would be my preference.

This! And some non fiction like a guide to seabirds, shells etc and the local area. Any fiction set in the local area would be great if it exists.

Ladder of Years by Ann Tyler
Any of the Jeeves and Wooster books
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
A few Bernard Cornwell historical novels
A selection of decent autobiographies

All the Patrick gale books. Lots set in Cornwall, lots of strong female characters and just bloody brilliant prose.

I am in cornwall reading one at the moment. I save one for each holiday here.

The Hunger Games trilogy.

Anything by Robert Harris, especially Fatherland or Pompeii.

Anything by Philippa Gregory, nice light reading.

Anything by William Boyd, he spins a good yarn, especially Restless or Sweet Caress.

Stargazing by Peter Hill. A lovely, charming and funny book about a young man taking summer jobs as a lighthouse keeper in the 1970s.

Pony books - the Jill series and and the Jinty at Finmory series

Rebecca?

Dorothy L. Sayers

Barbara Pym

Some good poems

The Changes Trilogy by Peter Dickinson
Any book by Alan Garner (love the Owl Service)
The Scarecrows by Robert Westall
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
The British Library Crime Classics are great - especially the Freeman Wills Croft ones
The Gervase Fen books by Edmund Crispin

They're very lightweight but any of Fern Britton's books would be good for anyone that fancies a fluffy 'seaside' read.

Thanks, lots of replies!

Ooh great, it will be Pembrokeshire slightly led you astray with my Cornish recipe suggestion!

It's good to get a range, I am quite eclectic myself so like a nosy at other people's shelves and a chance to pick up something different - on the other hand would want something I would enjoy so keen to get some views!

I have a few of these but also some I don't know at all like Stargazing -which caught my eye because I have a seventies obsession. I have a large collection of books relating to the seventies, history/politics/fiction as I have a started novel set then.