If I like Nancy Mitford, Jilly Cooper, Barbara Pym...

[bigkidsdidit]

who else would I like?

A few months of biographies, feminist book group books and Serious Tomes and I need some fun (but not crap) books for the tube journey to work.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

thanks :)

Has anyone mentioned Molly Keane yet?

Anglo Irish families, country houses (usually in a state of disrepair), some lovely humour.

I don't know if Nancy Mitford read her, but I bet she did.

Oh, she so did. I like Loving and Giving and the other one, that I've forgotten . Lovely writing.

Maggie O'Farrell is worth a try too, particularly The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.

I also love Rose Macaulay: Told by an Idiot, Crewe Train, Towers of Trebizond, The World My Wilderness.

terribly brittle dont you know

This made me laugh.

Has anyone else read any Julian Fellowes? I find him a bit Mitford/Waugh-ish but obv much more modern. He's a bit like a very bitchy cold mean Jilly Cooper if that makes sense.

Molly Keane sounds good.

ooh!

working from home today - meant to be doing 6 hours of graph drawing. And the doorbell just went - here is Diary of a Provincial Lady!

I'm pretending to have a dilemma about what I'm going to do today...

Haberdashery - Julian Fellowes as in Gosford Park? Didn't know he writes. Coo.

Haberdashery - have read Snobs - I think that's by him no? Wasn't overly impressed. TBH nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to Jilly for me. She is my ultimate in trashy novels.

Although actually has anyone read the Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M Auel? . They are very rubbishy in some ways (lots of sex scenes, most of them gratuitous), but also historically fairly accurate - about the pre-historic times etc. V addictive.

Apologies for lowering the tone everyone

LOVE Waugh though - Brideshead and Vile Bodies are two of my favourite books. I do read proper books too I promise. I love reading so much I often have 3 or so books on the go at once, once being a decent one and one being less so (eg, now I am reading How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, Anna Karenina, and might re-read a trash book too)

Also love Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale is amazing but fairly haunting.

Clan of the Cave Bear! I love those books. Brilliant stuff.

Just my sort of books!

My dream come true would be to have a free trolley dash round Persephone Books.

Will look up the (sadly few) books on here I haven't read. So Georgette Heyer is good? I assumed it was a lot of bodice ripping, possibly because my granny hid her Georgette Heyers under the sofa cushions.

Georgette Heyer is brilliant - very witty, romantic and clever books. Not much bodice-ripping though, a couple of snogs are usually about as far as it goes for her heroines!

What about Elizabeth Goudge? The Herb of Grace has to be one of my favourite books ever.

Mavis Cheek - FANTASTIC!
Eva Rice - The lost art of keeping secrets.

Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Mary Ann Shaffer - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Molly Keane's books are probably amongst the funniest books I have ever read.

Oh, The Herb of Grace!!!! I didn't think anyone had heard of it but me! I love it so much.

Have you read Thendara House by Marion Zimmer Bradley?

Elisabeth Jane Howard

Jan Struther - Mrs Miniver. Nothing like the film.

The Herb of Grace is excellent. I have a lovely old hardback copy.

I'm going to be kept busy till Christmas :) these books sound great! Am stuck into Diary of a Provincial Lady now and LOVING it

Just catching up with the recommendations. I love a bodice ripper - could I read Clan of the Cave Bear without a city boy reading it over my shoulder and sniggering?

I am SHOCKED that Vile Bodies and Brideshead are not Proper Books! If Charles Dance is in the film version it's a classic as far as I'm concerned

Has someone suggested Gaudy Night - Dorothy L Sayers?

Bigkids - don't worry - I do think Vile Bodies and Brideshead are proper books - was just referring to them sort of as an aside as Haberdashery mentioned Julian Fellows was a bit Waugh-esque.

Re Clan of the Cave Bear - only if not a sex scene - they are hilarious! Just skim the sex scene if on tube and come back to read it later

I'm jealous of anybody that hasn't read Goergette Heyer.
I've just re-read them all on my kindle, and there's no more left.
I love her.

I've never read Georgette Heyer - which one shall I start with?!

I haven't I haven't! Me too - which to start with?

Snobs by Julian Fellowes is very Mitford-esque. Vile Bodies was an obvious influence on Nancy Mitford, but Brideshead Revisited is probably a bit maudlin and introspective for what you want at the moment. It's always made out to be about the friendship between Sebastian and Charles at Oxford, but that's only a small part of the story.

Cold Comfort Farm is laugh-out-loud funny.

In terms of crime, what about some of the older Ruth Rendells? Lots of intrigue, affairs and weirdness in big houses, alongside the death and destruction.