Feel good easy reads but not too easy(!) for a friend

[Fayrazzled]

My lovely friend is having a big operation in the next few weeks and I am putting together some gifts for her for when she recuperates. She loves to read so I am after some suggestions for some easy to read, feel good books (ie. nothing too sad with anyone dying of cancer) that she can pick up and put down as recuperates. She tends towards literary fiction so I don't want anything too trashy just good stories that aren't too taxing. Any suggestions?

I loved " the lost lights of st kilda" by Elisabeth gifford.
Or Ruth hogan the keeper of lost things for a light and easy read

I mean PG Wodehouse all the way, right? Jeeves, Mr Mulliner, short stories, novels, the man was incapable of writing a duff line.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Bear with me. It makes you feel better because it takes you right out of yourself. It has a great plot and cracking dialogue: well written and easy to read. And it’s short.

Also Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, which the OP on the ‘marooned in snow’ thread mentioned. Regency romance - don’t turn away - great characters, hilarious, beautifully written, all turns out well in the end.

And short stories by Saki.

I hope your friend’s operation goes well.

I’ve just read ‘the girl with the louding voice’ by Abi Daré and it was brilliant, easy read but I loved it!

The President’s Hat by Antoine Laurain (sp?)

Easy, feelgood, perfect for recuperation.

I loved Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close which is an easy read but captures a certain point in women's lives really intelligently.
Other suggestions:
A Gentleman in Moscow would be my other go to.

What kind of thing does she like to read, though? Some people’s idea of an easy read is my idea of drivel, for instance, and my default ‘read when fragile’ books (Austen, Ursula Le Guin, Rebecca West, Laurie Collin, biographies) wouldn’t be for everyone.

(Also, maybe worth pointing out that if I’m feeling really very unwell or unsettled, I only want to reread very familiar things — I don’t feel up to the imaginative leap involved in imagining a new fictional world. Might be worth checking with your friend in case she’s happier with old favourites?)

Sylvester’s pretty good, but I would go for Venetia by Heyer as an introduction - and both characters as so well read there’s the fun of spotting all their quotations too.

Leonard And Hungry Paul by Ronan Hessian is a slow burn but ultimately lovely.

Might she enjoy some audio? There was a brilliant adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac on radio 4, still on bbc sounds if in the UK. Tom Burke as Cyrano. 15-minute episodes and an absolute joy to listen to. Poignant ending but cathartic. Uplifting because it is so well done.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05xx8hw

The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo was pure chewing gum for the brain and I devoured over two days last Christmas.

Ruth Jones (Gavin and Stacey) writes easily and lightly, again chewing for the brain.

If she likes literary fiction, and you want something light, then Wodehouse is the obvious choice. He was a superb stylist, and his language is sublime (when he died, some critics compared him to Shakespeare). Right Ho Jeeves is as close to perfection as anything ever written.

Jane Austen would be another obvious choice.

Douglas Adams?

Sherlock Holmes?

These are the books that cheer me up:

Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim (an old favourite)

Evelyn Waugh: Decline and Fall

Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts

Virginia Woolf: Orlando

The Wind in the Willows

C J Sansom: Shardlake

Malibu Rising or Carrie Soto is back…nice easy reads but still intelligent IYSWIM. Anything by Lucinda Riley

Definitely not Lucinda Riley if your friend likes more literary books. They are Mills and Boon standard writing. Easy fluff but terrible writing.

The Decameron by Boccacio

May seem an odd choice as its people quarantined during plague but its 10 days of 10 stories so easy to do a short read as each one is quite short and the stories are entertaining