In wanting to read a happy book?

[ICantCopeAnymore]

I suffer with PTSD and anxiety and I love reading. I'm really struggling with my mental health which is very up and down and books used to be my happy place.

More recently, I've found that everything I read is miserable. Full of death, cancer, illness, murder etc. Even the women's fiction books like Katie Fforde type literature have started going the same way, always including a young widow, a dreadful car accident, funerals and dying children. I was recommended "The Lido" and I've never sobbed so much through a book. It was supposed to be an uplifting, heartwarming read and it was about dreadful loneliness and death.

These things are all really triggering for me at the moment - AIBU in just wanting an escape from hospitals and death? I feel like I can't read or watch TV any more without being bombarded with misery.

Can anyone recommend anything to read that isn't traumatic please?

Thank you

Following

I'm not in a great place psychologically at the moment so I've had a spell of reading some old childhood favourites that I've kept. They're short, easy to concentrate on etc. I find I just can't focus on anything long or involved.

Peppermint Pig, The Tree that Sat Down, Family from One End Street, Just William, A Traveller in Time etc.

Ooh yes, @Clionba - the Mapp and Lucia books are fab!

I agree - Mapp & Lucia is fab.

I love Bill Bryson too, Try the James Herriot collection or Gerald Durrall, ( much better than the recent tv series ) particularly My Family and Other Animals and The Aye Aye and I ,

This is a very useful thread, I need this sort of literature sometimes too.

I wouldn't call the Handmaid's Tale 'jolly' exactly!

Eleanor Oliphant was cheering, and The Last Mrs Parrish was fun too.

James Herriot is a good recommendation. Also those Gervaise Phinn books, he's a primary school inspector, and it's basically funny anecdotes, but really distracting.
I can't face anymore books describing child abuse etc.

The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell are mostly very gentle humour, and laugh out loud funny in places. The individual books are My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods.

There's a Netflix adaptation but they've managed to make it quite dark.

Oh yes, PG Wodehouse would be just the thing. I'll see if I can think of anything to add.

Jill Mansell's 'Head over Heels' is a particularly good one, and Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series are fabulous entertainment. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series if you like fantasy. Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series is lovely - and definitely Gerald Durrell's books.

The Darling Buds of May. My happy place book, over and over again.

Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery. I downloaded this as a talking book when I was stressed. It was engaging and charming.

@Drumknott has the perfect list there. I would only add Mapp and Lucia, Sir Terry Pratchett, Noel Stretfeild, Durrell, and travelogues.

Hang in there, hope things improve for you.

I had a similar problem, went to a local independent book shop and asked for something happy. The student working there gave me a fucking dystopian novel in which it was finally revealed that every one was dead. Nice.

I pretty much only read nice happy books now. So, some excellent suggestions above. If you like children's/YA books then Eva Ibbotson's YA books are lovely, plots sound formulaic but she writes with such humour and skill that you don't care. Michelle Magorian (Mr Tom fame)'s A Little Love Song is similarly excellent and far less traumatic than Goodnight Mr Tom.

Jane Austen. PG Wodehouse, Alexander McCall Smith, John Buchan, Dorothy L Sayers mysteries, Louisa May Alcott, LM Montgomery.

And a wildcard... Christopher Brookmyre. Very dark humour but laugh out loud funny. Farce. A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away would be the best starter. Do read the blurbs in case anything connected with your particular PTSD comes up - there are heists, terrorist attacks, murders etc.

If you like Harry Potter then another possibility is Harry Potter fan fiction. If you go to a site like Archive of Our Own and filter by number of reviews and complete, to get the quality ones (some are written by published writers and excellent amateurs having a bit of fun), and then use the filters to exclude anything too dodgy like torture, violence etc. There's various alternative futures, Marauders era stuff etc.

I love a good book thread, although I'm sorry to hear you're having a hard time OP.

I would totally second the PP's suggestion of Scotland Street Series - so, so funny and sweet.

Also Tim Moore - hilariously funny. Travel books, but with a twist, and the most endearing and witty outlook on life. Every one of them has made me guffaw with laughter (be careful when reading in public).

Also Annie Hawes as mentioned above - lovely, heart-warming books.

Oh, and Evelyn Waugh. Not Brideshead but the other ones. Delightful send-up of the upper classes.

Also love David Lodge. Haven't read them for a while, and there might be a bit of divorce and adultery, but very clever and very funny.

Haven't read the full thread. So i don't know if this has been mentioned. No1 ladies detective agency series by Alexander mccall smith. Beautifully simple with lovely little mysteries that our heroines solve who are two wonderfully independent feisty ladies. Satisfying, warm and will leave you feeling happy.

Yes to Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall is funny.

Try Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. It's completely enveloping.

Highly recommending Betty MacDonald- Egg and I and her second book Onions in the stew.

How about the wonderful David sedated?

I laugh at his stories every time. I find Nora ephron and Geoff dyer funny too...

I think a lot of us will take recommendations from here. The whole scandi noir, disturbed unhinged female protagonist, murder and torture genre is just getting old now.

*sedaris

You might enjoy Jack Sheffield’s books they are all about being a village primary school teacher in the 80s - mostly sweet stories about kids and social observations. I really enjoyed them despite being neither a teacher nor old enough to remember the 80s.