Recommendations for sick day reading

[comewhinewith]

I'm recovering from illness, likely to be until the end of the week at least. Can anyone recommend me their "must reads" to stop me going stir crazy?

I'm quite a quick reader, so need lots of inspiration!

Thanks!

Any genre requirements? Fiction or non fiction?

As a topical read, try Ben Bikman, Why we get sick.

If you like fantasy, The Malazan Book of the Fallen.
Crime, Jo Nebo, Anne Holt.
Sci Fi, Peter F Hamilton.

It's hard to give advice since we don't know what you like, but I'll give you my go-to books when I feel sad:

P. G. Wodehouse: Right Ho Jeeves
Douglas Adams: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited and The Sword of Honour
Robert Graves: Goodbye to all That
The poetry of Wendy Cope, Clive James, and John Betjeman
Aldous Huxley: Chrome Yellow and his essays
George Orwell: Essays (not a fan of his fiction)
Bertrand Russell: Autobiography and popular essays, especially his collected journalism
Virginia Woof: Mrs Dalloway
Wilde: Dorian Gray (and also his essays and dialogues)
Stephen Fry: Moab is my Washpot
Brian Blessed: Autobiography
Dickens: David Copperfield
C. S. Lewis: Narnia books

The last time I was ill, I lay there listening to Stephen Fry read me Sherlock Holmes. Heaven.

Thank you! I've read some of these, but not all. I'll make a list 🙂

I always think that short stories, preferably easy, amusing ones, are good when you're unwell, especially if you're likely to be dozing off.

Strange Sally Diamond.
Best book I have read in years.

Why don't you try Just One Damned Thing After Another? It's a fun romp (time travelling disaster magnets of historians, doesn't fit neatly into any one genre), but very distracting. And if you like it there are sequels...

Demon Copperhead!