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

I read a lot of Marian Keyes when I was in the same situation. Not necessarily uplifting in the sense that she deals with some difficult topics but they were the right level of escapism I needed during a very difficult time.

It ends with us

Then

It starts with us

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson and Georgette Heyer

I was literally scrolling to recommend Miss Pettigrew. It's such comfort. Truly recommend.

Ignore this. Sorry.

Jane Fallon or Beth O’Leary

YY to Big Stone Gap and Miss Read and I'd also suggest James Herriot's vet series. Really cosy and escapist.

Bridget Jones' diary. Nice short chunks and funny.

Jilly Cooper for jolly escapism of rather boozy people who adore dogs and don’t mind being broke and living in leaking but picturesque cottages.

Georgette Heyer for witty funny Austen-but-more-readable romances

Wodehouse must be an audiobook as it translates to that BEST though wonderful in any form. It just cuddles your edges when you’re driving and trying not to think sad thoughts.

Betty Neels if you’re broken. For a dated Cinderella story that has a large Dutch doctor and a mousey haired heroine who is practical but can’t articulate her emotions but ends up in a house with a butler and a lovely dog.

Hope you and your Mom are doing ok.

If you want something you don't have to think about, Sophie Kinsella The Undomestic Goddess and Jane Green Jemima J are both easy and comforting

Any favourite childhood books. I still reread my Famous Five, Secret 7 and the Naughtiest Girl books

Even Harry Potter are lovely distraction and easy to read

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons and Anne of Green Gables are my favourite comfort reads.

Im sorry to hear about your poor mum. Winter Solstice by Rosamumd
Pilcher is a really beautiful love story and escapist in the best sense.

I love Cold Comfort Farm!

Oh, and Alexander McCall Smith's Scotland Street series. Funny and quirky and nothing upsetting at all in them. He wrote them as a newspaper column originally, so they have short chapters .. very little concentration required.

Almost anything by Bill Bryson is light and even funny at times.

The Mapp and Lucia series by EF Benson which I have just discovered, can't believe I've never read them before !

Any of the Jeeves novels

a bit leftfield.. The Jennings stories written by Anthony Buckeridge. Boarding school boys stories but by an incredibly talented writer very similar to PG Wodehouse. They've kept me rocking with laughter for 40 years even though I have read them over and over and over. Start with Jennings Goes to School. The incident with the two main heroes Jennings and Darbishire writing their postcards home makes me literally cry with laughter.

all of the above are lovely, gentle amusing stories told by master storytellers.

You can see if Jennings might float your boat here...
https://archive.org/details/jenningsgoestosc0000buck/page/4/mode/2up

So sorry to hear about your mum OP. I always find the book 'Anxious People' comforting for some reason. It might be worth a try?

So many good suggestions. Stepping back in time, whether closer to childhood or in period is somehow always comforting- the world being more ordered. I am sorry for your situation- I am in similar with a parent.

I came on to suggest
Mapp & Lucia
i capture the Castle
Dorothy L Sayers & Peter Wimsey books
Agatha Christie
Chalet School books
Georgette Heyer (regency and detective books)
Love Jenings too, also the Just William books are a delight

I second the recommendations for James Herriot, Bill Bryson and Terry Pratchett. They are absorbing but light reading and gently funny. Best wishes, OP x

I was coming on to recommend these. My DH read all the James Herriot going through something similar. Also Gerald Durrell.

Janette Oke books are lovely and some of them have been turned into films/tv series.

@crumpet I love St Clare's, Malory Towers, Worst Witch etc. Would I like Chalet School ? Looking for a new audiobook for an upcoming drive with boarding-school-story-loving dd14 from the far east of Sussex to the far west of Cornwall....

So sorry to hear of your mother's illness.

Katie Fforde is lightweight chick lit that I find easy to read. She always has happy ever after endings. Second the suggestions of Bill Bryson (especially Notes from a small island) and the James Herriot stories.