I'm so down right now, please help me find a book to read

[adaptiveness]

I'm not going into the details, but I'm not in a good place right now and I badly need a good book.

I have 5 mins to write this, so am going to be really unreasonable and just list the stuff that I can't deal with reading about right now.

No sex, suicide, romance, bad stuff happening to kids, sad endings, books that will make me think about the fucked up state of the world. No kooky, random, wet, indecisive protagonists. No 'hilarious' bad parenting.

Any genre fine: fiction, literature, sci-fi, fantasy, non-fiction, historical, comedy, biography, sport. Whatever. I just need to disappear into a good book.

Please help!

@mum2jakie
Oh yes!
Perhaps not.

Update: Turns out that Anne of Green Gables was the book I needed. I've definitely read the first one before, but possibly not all of them, so that should keep me busy for a while. Thanks everyone!

That’s a great book
Hope you are feeling better.

Such a great read @adaptiveness, books can be so soothing. Your thread has been a great idea, every other book on the kindle store at the moment seems to be a badly written murder thriller so I've been sticking with the classics. At the moment I'm on a Nancy Mitford anthology, pure escapism with barmy caricatures!

I find Anne of Green Gables very comforting, too. The next few in the series are lovely and gentle, but Anne’s House of Dreams is sadder and more serious, just as a heads up.

For something completely different but very uplifting, Consolation Songs edited by Iona Datt Sharma is a collection of optimistic Sci Fi stories with profits going to the University College London Hospitals charity.

@Dillydollydingdong Yes, I loved Mr Loverman too and have bn recommending it to lots of people for the last 6 years? since I read it. There are some sad bits but I think it's quite a funny and life affirming novel overall.

@adaptiveness Glad that you found Anne of Green Gables and that it worked for you, and you have the whole series ahead of you - though I think that the first 3 or 4 books are the best - Anne of Avonlea sees Anne through some of her teenage years, then in Anne of the Island she goes to college.

When you've worked your way through the Anne series, or even just the earlier and better ones (pre marriage), I also recommend L M Montgomery's Emily trilogy, starting with Emily of New Moon, though I found the 3rd book in the trilogy a bit of a letdown after the brilliance of Emly in the first two.

Great post, Anne of green gables for sure

@adaptiveness

Update: Turns out that Anne of Green Gables was the book I needed. I've definitely read the first one before, but possibly not all of them, so that should keep me busy for a while. Thanks everyone!

I quite envy you that you get to read the whole series as new. They really are my favourite books.

I hope you're feeling better.

@lazylinguist

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Long, adventurous fantasy book, and my favourite book in the world! It has a sequel (A Wise Man's Fear) and will eventually have a (long-awaited) third and final book. It's not totally without romance, but it's not mournful, maudlin or soppy at all.

Thank you so much for this recommendation lazylinguist, I’m just coming to end of this now having been drawn in hook, line and sinker! It’s been an amazing read and very different to anything else I’ve read before.

Do I buy book number 2 though? Sad to see that it has quite mixed reviews- what went wrong!