Recommendations for comforting reads please

[Colefra]

I'm struggling with very frustrating insomnia. I wake at around 4a.m. I pick up my Kindle and reading helps keep those anxious, dark thoughts away at that time. It's dark, it's cold so I need some comforting, cosy reads for that time in the morning.

I found both novels from Sangu Mandanna such wholesome, cosy fantasy reads.

Have you ever read the 'Miss Read' books? Many were set in a village called Fairacre, in the cotswolds Imthink, and she was a schoolmistress, probably in the first half of the twentieth century. Village doings, interesting characters, gentle books. She wrote lots in a similar vein.
another set starts with the Sea for Breaksfast, by Lilian Beckwith. After an illness she goes to,live on an island in western Scotland, seven books Ithink, and all the great characters and doings. Loved them.

Miss Read. Stories about villages and small towns where everybody and everything is lovely.
I find cosy mysteries, where everything works out by the end but that may not be what you're looking for.

Lark Rise to Candleford
Little Women
The James Herriot books

For a decent but easy read I like Debbie Johnson's Comfort Food Cafe series. Also some Milly Johnson - i particularly enjoyed I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday and The Magnificent Mrs Maisel.

Maeve Binchy

84 Charing Cross Road.

E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia books-a lighter, more bitchy Jane Austen in 1920s/30s Sussex with various social plotting.

If you have been put off by the clumsy TV series, don't let it stop you from turning to these little bubbles of joy.

However, if you do want to watch a TV series that captures it- then the original 1980s programme starring Prunella Scales, Nigel Hawthorne and Geraldine McEwan are on YouTube.

The Children of Green Knowe - L M Boston

Oh I came here to suggest Miss Read! My Mum knew her - she was the headmistress of a school near where we lived in Berkshire.

The Bridgerton books are a very easy read. I also love all the old Jane Green books from the 90’s.

Oh I love those books and re-read them often! Very witty and amusing. I have the dvd of the original series with those actors and it's an absolute joy!

All the children's classics -
E Nesbit
Arthur Ransome
Enid Blyton - I give the Famous Five a miss these days, but I still like The Faraway Tree, The Wishing Chair, Malory Towers and the Adventure series
The Chalet School

If you like cosy crime, Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver. Very undemanding.

All the above are available on fadedpage.com

Plus Georgette Heyer. Romance, but also wit and humour and great secondary characters. She also wrote a few crime novels in the Golden Age period.

Rosamund Pilcher's Winter Solstice is a complete comfort read for me at this time of year. Her other books The Shell Seekers, Coming Home and September are wonderful as well.

Marian Keyes books are always wholesome and cozy even if they are sometimes about less nice things or people’s problems. You need a good family saga !

Maeve Binchy was my first thought.

Just read ‘One Snowy Day’ by Sharri Low which had a feelgood factor to it as well.

@MagdaLenor

Check out the two Mapp and Lucia novels by Tom Holt. I resisted these for a long time, thinking they would be some dreadful pale imitation but they're not-they're great!

Yes, I've read them!

Nothing compares to P. G. Wodehouse. As Evelyn Waugh said, he re-created Eden. I think Douglas Adams said the same thing – that Wodehouse succeeded where Milton failed (i.e he described paradise and made it believable). Not only a superlative stylist, and very funny, but endlessly joyful.

Patrick Fermor is another comfort read. He's not for everyone, but I find his travel book A Time of Gifts an utter joy. In the main it's because he's such wonderful company. He was one of those people who sees the best in everyone and everything.

Other writers I reach for in the winter nights: Bill Bryson, C. S. Lewis (yes, I love the Narnia books, and yes I am a full grown adult), Bertrand Russell (his essays and journalism weirdly cheer me up; again, like Fermor, he was a naturally happy man, and that gets into his writing). I'd add Roald Dahl, Stephen Fry, Jane Austen, Dickens, and Douglas Adams to the list.

Yes, I'd second P. G. Wodehouse

Terry Pratchett
James Herriot - endlessly comforting
Gerald Durrell
Still Life - it's a warm read.
brideshead revisited, it's evocative and I find it calming, that evocation of a lost world.

I love the Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill.

Another vote for Maeve Binchy - I re-read her books all the time.

I loved Anne of the Green Gables.

In times of trouble, I always return to Georgette Heyer, sep The Grand Sophy, Frederica, or Venetia. Everything is right in the end - even the baddies are dealt with carefully, and it’s all just lovely. But also well written