Comfort reading - best authors

[Blerg]

I am having a tricky time at the moment and I always find anything by Fannie Flagg ridiculously comforting, and was pleased so see a new book by her since I last checked. Always gently funny, strong US Southern women, feminist but sentimental.

Who are your best 'comfort' authors?

Terry Pratchett or the various ‘queens of crime’.

Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer's a good call. Not only for her more well known historical romances, but also her many excellent classic golden age whodunnits.

Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Berg are my comfort authors.

For me, Georgette Heyer's regency and mystery novels, Terry Pratchett's discworld (particularly the ones involving the witches) and Gerald Durrell's Corfu trilogy, which I've read to absolute rags.

Georgette Heyer. Deeply politically incorrect especially in some of the earlier ones but absolutely spot on funny with some of the observations about family dynamics. And I've just finished for the third time 'Murder Is Advertised' followed directly by 'Gaudy Night' by D L Sayers. I do think she was a bit OTT with the poetry, but her observations about western culture in the 1930's - eugenics, the throwaway comment about 'Wot this country needs is an 'Itler' are incredibly telling and fascinating about how people genuinely were in the 1930's.

And how could I forget, one of my total favourites The Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Absolutely insane but hilarious!

Soz it's Murder Must Advertise* isn't it.

Oooo ooo I'd forgotten Mapp and Lucia! Again deeply politically incorrect but viciously sharp characterisatian. Anyone read 'Secret Lives'?

Oh, all the E.F. Benson's works especially Mapp and Lucia.

Any of Paul Theroux's travel books. Also Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. My ultimate comfort read though is Lord of the Rings.

Oh, so many of these! Plus, when I really want to escape the trials and tribulations of everyday life, Georgette Heyer.

Another Jane Austen fan here
Also Alison Weir
And the Chalet school books

Jean Plaidy
L M Montgomery
Jane Austen

Bill Bryson especially Down Under.
Jilly Cooper, the early novels and The Common Years.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

And a book I return to at least twice a year though it is really awful.

Cinderella in Sunlight by Hermina Black.

Gervaise Phinn. Very funny books and heartwarming too

Barbara Pym. Beautifully observed, witty and nothing shocking ever happens. Makes me relax and enjoy the simple parts of life. For comfort you are in safe hands with her books.

Rosamund Pilcher books, particularly Winter Solstice. Like a cosy pair of slippers!

Another vote for EM Delafield - The Diary of a Provincial Lady. Can’t believe it took me so long to come across this treasure and very jealous of anyone who is still to read it for the first time.

I am completely addicted to both the Brother Cadfael medieval whodunnits by Ellis Peters and when I need a change of historical setting I am always ridiculously soothed by the Agatha Raisen stories by MC Beaton. The latter has so well observed of women like me, single, 50+ and still eternally hopeful, prickly and mystified about why men are so .... confusing!!!.... Hilarious and spot on, you will laugh out loud in recognition of yourself... Listen to both lots on Audible (fall asleep with an actual book in my hands...)...

And another vote for Gerald Durrell, read all of them in my youth, fabulous - hilariously entertaining and well observed of humans as well as animal life.