Well, not your namesake, op. One if- the first?- English novels and interminable. Beats Moby Dick.
Agree nearly all of the above. I think David Copperfield more readable than Hard Times and better than, and more readable than Bleak House, though I prefer the latter.
For bizarre,
Confessions of a justified sinner. Readable
Wyndhams the Chrysalids is brilliant.
What about some poetry ? Really good for fraught mums too as can read one short poem and then change a nappy.
If single author,
Carol Ann Duffy, the World's wife. I defy anyone to read the one about Icarus and not laugh, though the second hand bed is v moving,
Wendy Cope, making cocoa fir Kingsley Amis
Larkin, the Whitsun Weddings
Simon Armitage, Gawain and the green knight
Heaney Beowulf
Hughes crow or the hawk in the rain.
If a collection
Poems on the underground, all short, brill collection
Set the echoes flying, a good anthology of classic poetry
Other men's verse, the classic anthology
All available through Abe.