Please recommend me an easy read book for tough times

[Mallowmarshmallow]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone could recommend me an easy read, uplifting book please?

My lovely mum has just been diagnosed with cancer and is very swiftly becoming very unwell.

I'm an avid reader and need a book to help me in the quiet moments, but I can't concentrate on much, and every book I've begun recently has death or sadness in it.

I appreciate any recommendations.

Thank you

Possibly a Louise Douglas book?

The Secret of Villa Alba is about a woman trying to track down what happened to her relative. It’s a mystery set largely in Italy and has a great sense of place.

I'd recommend Laura Wood - many of her novels are technically YA but they are uplifting and funny. Also Sara Desai - heist romcom.

Sorry to hear about your mum.

The Enchanted April
My Family and Other Animals
Jeeves and Wooster books

Personally I would reread old childhood favourites when times are tough.

Yes I was going to suggest childhood favourites - not necessarily children's books but ones you enjoyed as an older teenager perhaps. I re-read Georgette Heyers when I can't concentrate and need distraction.

Jeeves and Wooster and Georgette Heyer's Regency romances are both a good call. A lot of people swear by Terry Pratchett's comic fantasy novels.

Sorry to hear about your mum.

I second The Enchanted April. It's a wonderful read that I go back to every Easter.

Also:
A Fortnight in September by RC Sherrif
A Month in the Country by JL Carr
South Riding by Winifred Holtby (though there is a death in it, so maybe look at plot summary before you read it)
Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series got me through my granddad's illness.

Wishing you well.

In this situation I read Matt Haig's The Humans and Midnight Library.

Thank you all, I appreciate your time and well wishes and will look into your recommendations.

I agree re Tales of the City, but they do have some sad bits

P. G. Wodehouse would be the obvious choice – it's a world without death or sadness. Someone once described Wodehouse as having recreated Eden. The prose is superlative as well. In fact, Wodehouse is really the greatest comic prose poet in the English language. If you don't feel up to reading, how about listening to Stephen Fry? I'd also recommend listening to Brian Blessed reading his autobiography. Parts of it made me scream with laughter – to the point where I had to pull the car over.

I find Douglas Adams comforting as well. He was very much influenced by Wodehouse.

How about non-fiction? Patrick Fermor's A Time of Gifts always lifts me. I also find Bertrand Russell's popular philosophy books a joy.

Love and hope to you and your mum x

Any of Libby Pages books

Jilly Cooper books

Patricia Fisher books - Steve Higgs

Cruise series - Dawn Brooks

Trash chuck lit books

Miss Read. Very old-fashioned and very comforting. And some of the character sketches are amusing as well.

Anne of Green Gables is a lovely read. Easy to read but beautifully written.

I've been reading a lot to distract myself from two significant bereavements that happened back to back this year.

So far the best distraction has been books by Diana Wynne Jones. They are the right mix of complex plot, simple and easy to read prose, and fantasy worlds to be a full distraction from what's happening day to day.

Howls Moving Castle, or Fire and Hemlock, or Hexwood are good ones to start off with.

What you are looking for is in the library

Ben Aaronvitch, his Rivers of London series is easy reading about a London detective with magical powers. They are gripping enough to keep you interested, but light enough not too be to taxing. When my lovely Nan was in hospice they had a small library and I read a lot of Hemingway.

I re-read the Mallory Towers books when my mum was dying of cancer. And I watched the Inbetweeners and the Office.

I’d recommend the Big Stone Gap books by Adrianna Trigiani too - they’re lovely to read.

I really like the railway children. The Doctor is wonderfully soothing.

The Miss Read books. Comforting but not saccharine. Funny & kind stories of village life.

Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield.

Go into your local library & just choose. If you don't like a book you've not wasted money!

Jilly Cooper 'The Common Years', Monty Don (any gardening books), recipe books with memoirs, Rupert Everett's autobiographies- have all got me through tough times. (So, oddly, did Phillipa Gregory's 'The White Queen').

Eva Ibbotson's books are so romantic. Try The Morning Gift or Madensky Square. The Bridgerton books are also super easy reading.

I love ‘hens dancing’ by Raffaella Barker

The St Mary’s chronicles are lovely easy escapism.

Sorry you're having a tough time.
I second Jilly Cooper - a whole different world and fabulous with it.