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 :)

Celia and Kings, I don't think you could go wrong with The Grand Sophy.

I like Bath Tangle and The Black Moth, but The Grand Sophy is good too.

They all stand alone I think (at least the ones I've read do), so it doesn't really matter.

Ooh, where do I start.
Y for The Grand Sophy, then there is Frederica, Black Sheep, Arabella, These Old Shades, I could go on and on, oh and Venetia and Sylvester.
The books are light and frothy and witty, and so well written, she knew her stuff did Georgette Heyer.

Would also recommend The Grand Sophy. And Friday's Child.

Winter's coming, I can feel a complete Georgette Heyer re-read coming on ...

Have read Vile Bodies, Brideshead and CCF, also almost all Ruth Rendell - like all those suggestions so might get snobs then!

Just finished Diary of a Provincial Lady. I LOVED it! Kept suddenly GUFFAWING and making people jump. At one point - when she's playing tennis at the country house party, I think - I laughed so much I started coughing and a woman opposite looked up, looked at the book and beamed in recognition :)

Have to say I did not like the further Diaries in the volume though.

Grand Sophy now!

agree all the above
Light romantic novels:1930s to 50s:
EM Delafield,
Angela Thirkell, DM Stevenson
Thirkell gets the inter war social caste snobbishness and is I think as funny as Benson though not so well known - Wild strawberries
Rumer Godden - eg Black Narcissus
Elizabeth Goudge - the Damerosehay ones or A scent of water
Paul Gallico

how about EM Forster?, Howard's End, A Passage to India, A Room with a View

and Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion

on crime,
the Miss Silver mysteries - not so good as DL Sayers, very gentle - knitting and english muffins (good in times of flu or desperation)
Edmund Campion's detective stories
Wexford - gentle
the sometimes politically incorrect Dick Francis horse thrillers - but not just horses, good detail elsewhere
Lindsay Davies' Falco series - begin with The Silver Pigs

and how could I have forgotten Neville Shute? Anyone else with me? A town like Alice, Requiem for a Wren, Beyond the Black Stump..

am with all Heyer fans. I'd add Devil's Cub (after These Old Shades, obviously) and A Civil contract to the list. and Frederica.

Who wrote The Devil's Advocate?

Also, Colleen McCullough.

People have already suggested all the obvious possibilities, just thought I'd mention that Vintage are reissuing Stellla Gibbons, with the exception of Nightingale Wood which is fab and was reissued from Virago a couple of years ago.

I also love Barbara Comyns.

ahhhhhh some of my fave books ever are on here

snobs
eva rice
love monica dickens too
and cff

all v highly recc

I've been looking at Barbara Pym novels for my reading list, all because of this thread!
MN is nothing if not inspirational!

Could always try Colette/Roald Dahl/Chaim Potok...

Or if you want something nice to read on the tube, there's EH Gombrich's Little History of the World. Supposed to be for kids, it's for everyone really.

Forever Amber - Kathleen Winsor. Historical bodice-ripping-blockbuster

Was also going to say Sayers and Heyer.

If you like Sayers, try Ngaio Marsh (Inspector Alleyn). And PD James (Dalgleish).