Sometimes you don’t need a book that’s going to change your life.
You don’t need 400 pages explaining how to become more productive, wake up at 5am, transform your finances and achieve inner peace before breakfast.
Sometimes you just need a really good book.
The sort you can disappear into for a few hours when everything feels a bit much.
A book that makes you laugh on page 27. One that introduces you to characters you genuinely miss when it’s finished. Or something that gently reminds you that human beings are, despite fairly compelling evidence to the contrary, often rather wonderful.
I’ve always thought books are particularly good company when you’re feeling a little flat.
They don’t expect conversation. They don’t mind if you’re wearing pyjamas at four in the afternoon. And unlike most forms of entertainment, a library book can provide hours of escape without costing you anything at all.
So put the kettle on, find somewhere comfortable and pull the blanket over your knees.
Here are some books to reach for when you need a bit of a lift.
The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman
Yes, there are murders.
Quite a few of them, actually.
Which perhaps doesn’t immediately suggest uplifting read.
But the real joy of The Thursday Murder Club isn’t the bodies. It’s Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron – four friends living in a retirement village who meet every Thursday to investigate old unsolved crimes and suddenly find themselves with a real murder on their hands.
It’s clever and funny, but there’s also enormous warmth underneath it.
The friendships matter. Age isn’t treated as a slow decline into invisibility. These characters have histories, talents, secrets, opinions and plenty still to do.
And Joyce’s observations on everyday life are reason enough to read it.
The first book also opens the door to an entire series, which is useful when you’ve found fictional people whose company you’d rather not leave.
Read it when: you want something clever, warm and very British, with a mystery to keep you turning the pages.
A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
Ove is not, at first glance, a particularly cheerful man.
He likes rules.
He likes things done properly.
And he has very definite views about people who fail to reverse a trailer correctly.
Underneath all the grumpiness, however, is a story about loneliness, grief, community and the unexpected ways people can find their way back to life.
This is one of those books that manages to be funny and deeply moving without becoming unbearably sentimental.
Ove’s carefully ordered existence begins to change when new neighbours arrive, bringing chaos with them.
And sometimes chaos is exactly what we need.
Read it when: you’ve temporarily lost faith in people.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
First of all, what a title.
Set just after the Second World War, this novel is told through letters and follows writer Juliet Ashton as she becomes fascinated by a book club formed during the German occupation of Guernsey.
There’s history here, and sadness too, but also friendship, humour, books and the wonderfully human ability to create community in difficult circumstances.
Perhaps that’s what makes it such a comforting read.
It’s about people finding one another.
And about books doing what books have always done rather well: providing companionship when the world outside isn’t particularly easy.
Read it when: you want charm, history and characters you can settle in with.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – Rachel Joyce
Harold Fry leaves home one morning to post a letter.
Then he keeps walking.
His friend Queenie is dying in a hospice hundreds of miles away and Harold, wearing entirely unsuitable shoes, decides he’s going to walk to her.
What follows is part road trip, part reflection on marriage, regret, friendship and all the things we carry with us.
It’s gentle rather than sugary.
Harold doesn’t suddenly become a different person because he’s gone for a very long walk.
But step by step, things begin to shift.
It also leaves you with the strong feeling that perhaps we should all walk a little more.
Although possibly after buying appropriate footwear.
Read it when: you need reminding that small steps still count.
I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith
If you’ve never read I Capture the Castle, you have a treat waiting.
Cassandra Mortmain lives with her wonderfully eccentric family in a crumbling English castle, where money is scarce, dinner can be unpredictable and her novelist father hasn’t written anything worthwhile for years.
Then two wealthy American brothers arrive nearby.
Cassandra records everything in her journal, and her voice is funny, intelligent, romantic and completely irresistible.
It’s a book about first love, family, growing up and making the best of a fairly ridiculous situation.
It also contains enough rainy English countryside, old houses and cups of tea to satisfy even the most committed Anglophile.
Read it when: you’d like to disappear into another world without travelling very far at all.
All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot
There are books that feel almost medicinal.
James Herriot’s stories of working as a young veterinary surgeon in the Yorkshire Dales are among them.
Farmers, dogs, cats, cows, horses, difficult births, eccentric colleagues and beautiful countryside all tumble together.
The stories can be moving, but they’re also very funny.
And there’s something enormously comforting about their scale.
The problems matter enormously to the people and animals involved, but the wider rhythm of life continues: farms need tending, animals need feeding and tomorrow morning there will undoubtedly be another cow requiring attention.
Preferably somewhere inaccessible.
Read it when: the modern world feels rather too modern.
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Yes, it’s technically a children’s book.
No, that doesn’t matter.
Some books don’t become less useful simply because we’ve grown up.
The Secret Garden begins with Mary Lennox, a lonely and rather disagreeable child who is sent to live in a huge Yorkshire house.
There she discovers a neglected garden hidden behind a locked door.
What follows is a story about friendship, nature, movement, recovery and the transformative effect of getting outside.
There are worse prescriptions for feeling better.
And reading it as an adult, you notice things you probably missed entirely as a child.
Read it when: you need a reminder to open the door and go outside.
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sometimes what you need is not gentle encouragement.
Sometimes you need something properly funny.
Cold Comfort Farm follows Flora Poste, a sensible young woman who goes to live with her spectacularly gloomy relatives at a Sussex farm.
The Starkadders are surrounded by doom, drama and rural misery.
Flora decides to sort them out.
It is wonderfully absurd.
If you’ve ever encountered a book in which everyone appears determined to be miserable for literary reasons, you’ll understand exactly what Gibbons is having fun with.
And if the phrase something nasty in the woodshed means nothing to you yet, all the better.
Read it when: everyone is taking life, and themselves, far too seriously.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
Miss Pettigrew is a middle-aged governess whose life has not gone according to plan.
Then an employment agency sends her to the wrong address.
Within hours she finds herself swept into the glamorous and chaotic world of nightclub singer Delysia LaFosse.
The whole story takes place over a single day.
And what a day.
It’s light, funny, romantic and gloriously escapist, but there’s something deeper underneath: the possibility that life can surprise us long after we’ve decided we know exactly what it contains.
Read it when: every day has started feeling suspiciously similar.
The Diary of a Nobody – George and Weedon Grossmith
Poor Charles Pooter.
He wants nothing more than to live a respectable suburban life and be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, life has other ideas.
Originally published in the late nineteenth century, The Diary of a Nobody is still remarkably funny because human beings haven’t changed nearly as much as we’d like to think.
We still worry about what the neighbours think.
We still take minor social disasters far too seriously.
We still occasionally buy things for the house that turn out to have been terrible mistakes.
Pooter would understand the modern neighbourhood WhatsApp group perfectly.
Read it when: you need proof that we’ve always been ridiculous.
Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery
Another book often filed under children’s literature that is far too enjoyable to abandon to children.
Anne Shirley arrives at Green Gables by mistake.
Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert had requested a boy to help on the farm.
Instead they get Anne.
Anne talks. A lot.
She has an extraordinary imagination, a tendency towards minor catastrophes and an enormous capacity for finding beauty in the world around her.
Perhaps that’s why the book remains so comforting.
Anne notices things.
Trees aren’t simply trees. Roads aren’t merely roads. Ordinary places become special because she pays attention to them.
There’s a lesson in there for grown-ups.
Read it when: the world has started looking a little grey around the edges.
Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
Three men decide that what they need is a boating holiday on the Thames.
They take a dog.
Things do not go smoothly.
Published in 1889, Three Men in a Boat is one of those wonderful reminders that people have always been people.
They overpack.
They argue about trivial things.
They imagine themselves to be far more competent than they actually are.
They become extremely interested in lunch.
Some things are eternal.
It’s light, silly and surprisingly fresh for a book that’s well over a century old.
Read it when: you want to laugh without having to concentrate terribly hard.
A book you’ve already read
This one doesn’t have an author.
Because it’s yours.
When you’re feeling low, tired or overwhelmed, don’t underestimate the pleasure of returning to something you already know you love.
We sometimes behave as though reading should involve constant progress.
Another title ticked off.
Another classic conquered.
Another worthy book added to the mental shelf marked Things I Have Successfully Read.
But rereading is one of life’s underrated pleasures.
You already know the characters.
You know where the story is going.
There are no nasty surprises.
It’s the literary equivalent of putting on your favourite jumper.
And sometimes that’s exactly what you need.
Don’t forget your local library
One of the loveliest things about reading is that it can still be remarkably inexpensive.
Libraries remain one of the few places where you can walk in, choose several things you want and leave without anybody expecting you to produce a bank card.
Which feels almost rebellious these days.
If you’re not sure what you fancy, browse.
Pick up something because you like the cover.
Try an author you’ve never read.
Ask a librarian.
And if a book isn’t working for you, take it back.
You are allowed to stop reading books you don’t enjoy.
Life is short.
There are an awful lot of books.
Nobody is awarding medals for making it grimly to page 463.
Read for pleasure
We talk a lot about the benefits of reading.
And there are plenty.
But perhaps we’ve become so good at turning everything into self-improvement that we’ve forgotten one of the most important reasons to open a book.
It’s enjoyable.
Reading can transport you somewhere else for an afternoon.
It can make you laugh when you haven’t felt much like laughing.
It can introduce you to people who don’t exist and somehow make you care enormously about what happens to them.
It can make a quiet evening feel like something you’ve chosen rather than something you’ve ended up with.
And when life feels heavy, a book doesn’t necessarily need to solve anything.
Sometimes it just needs to sit beside you for a while.
Preferably with a cup of tea.
And perhaps a biscuit.
Actually, make that two.
Further Reading: Dream Big and Live Fully with a Bucket List
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