What Do You Read When Ill?

[NotQuiteCockney]

I've been struggling with reading material. DH has a lot of shite books about, but apparently they're all a bit warlike, and hence not to my taste, particularly now.

I've just finished an old Farley Mowat, and much as I hate the man, it was the right sort of fluff. Mostly, I don't keep fluff, so my shelves are full of lovely Serious Books which I couldn't read now.

I did finish that Philip Roth about the Lindberg/Nazi thing, but doubt I fully appreciated it. I reread Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About, and enjoyed it. I read an Alexei Sayle, and was alarmed.

I'm probably about to start a satirical American novel, or a non-fiction about rats. Or start digging through the old books on the shelves again ...

Come on, where are all the other sick people?

Jane Austen...usually "Pride & Prejudice", but sometimes "Persuasion" or "Mansfield Park".

Really?

I'm not sure I've ever read any Jane Austen ... oh, is there one with a mad Caribbean wife in an attic? I read that one, as prep for reading another book based on it ...

I don't think I can read anything with ornate sentence structure when ill ...

I read Noel Streatfeild, E. Nesbit and bad magazines

Who are the two non-magazine people?

Oh, and I would read bad magazines, but they seem to annoy me too much. I read the New Yorker, but I'm up-to-date on it. Ditto the weekend papers. I miss the variety of interesting magazines in Canada, I am looking forward to reading stacks and stacks of them when home.

(Hmm, could start reading the 8 million issues of McSweeneys cluttering up the house since I got annoyed with it. Doesn't really count as light, though.)

I am reading Torey Hayden at the moment 'Ghost child'

I love her stuff

Noel Streatfeild wrote children's books inc. "Ballet Shoes" and "White Boots", and Nesbit wrote "The Railway Children", "Five Children and It" and others.

I like reading children's books at the best of times but when I am ill not much else will do :)

Will check your other threads to see how you are now.

a while ago i read 'Forget You Had a Daughter' by Sandra Gregory about a woman doing time in the bangkok hilton for drug traffiking, that was a really good book and sort of led you off into the whole subject.

The ultimate trashy fluffy stuff.... Jilly Cooper!! Gawd, did I just admit to that? The last new one got me through long stretches bf dd when I was so tired I could barely think straight. Probably the right mind set to be in then!!

Those books are from before your time, though, right F&Z? I don't know many old children's books, and what I have read (Thomas) I haven't loved that much. (Oh, Mike Milligan is a big hit in our house, and it's pretty old. And those books about the crocodile, who lives in NYC? Those are good. Both American, though.)

southeastastra, I don't think I could read something about someone in a Bankok jail when I was well, never mind when I was poorly.

Tamba, I don't know Torey Hayden, what sort of writing is she?

And honeybunny, how could you! Jilly Cooper? Really?

Seriously, a uni friend of mine liked her, and she loaned me a book of hers that was lovely. It was just like a normal romance novel, the main character (believed she) was a really lovely person, and everyone was just being mean to her because she was jealous. Only you could tell she was actually a really horrible person. It was marvellous. I think I've looked at one of hers since, and it wasn't like that ...

Yes, they are from before my time, NQC. They are, like, sort of famous.

Thomas is out and out crap, with knobs on.

I think I've heard of "The Railway Children". And perhaps you mean "famous in England"? ;-)

I know there are some good old American kid's books (old as in, I think, not much post WWII? Ah, checked, it's 1939), so there must be good UK ones.

Oh, that bloody Mrs Tiggy Winkle or whatever it is. That is offensive, right? She sounds like a charicature of a Black Southern washerwoman to me.

Oh, and I hate hate hate Thomas, but the boys really do love him. DS2 will flip through one of those old (original, horrid) books for ages.

Well, I think famous in the US, too, in fairness to me.

Yes Thomas books ugly and dull.

ballet shoes (a la F & Z), what katy did, little women, to kill a mocking bird, heidi...

or anything that came free with a mag and got ignored

Really, really, really! Jane Austen is comfort reading for me, but only my favourites (can't stand "Sense and Sensibility"): I know it so well and it's just like reading lots of stuff I've half memorised.

I also love "Anne of Green Gables", and have also just re-read "The Railway Children" (though I wasn't sick). "I think we will not open the door to follow him. I think that just now we are not wanted there. I think it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly away." Love it, love it, love it.

And "To kill a mockingbird" is brilliant. I also regularly re-read John Updike's Rabbit series when I'm ill or depressed.

Hmm, I could read Anne again, I used to love her.

I think I tried to read Updike once, and he just annoyed me greatly. And whenever he has fiction in the New Yorker, he still annoys me. (And I often read their fiction without checking the author name beforehand.)

Mee too F&Z just love Noel and Nesbitt, also Anne Series, (have just read all of them again) and all the ones on Peachyclair's list - I think I like kids books better than adult ones.

I also have a secret prediliction to Jilly Cooper, like eating crisps and sweet stuff, you know it's bad for you, but you just can't help it!

Have to confess my favourite 'poorly' reading is either Gone With the Wind or Forever Amber.

Sigh.

I like them when I'm not ill too.

Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, any Frances Hodgson Burnett apart from Fauntleroy, I Capture the Castle and a big YES to Jilly Cooper's 70s 'name' novels, oh they are heavenly