What do you read if you are feeling down?

P G Wodehouse never fails me.

Other ideas?

I just read Ready Player One and would highly recommend that as a comfort read. It's got the Star Wars "A New Hope" vibe - just plain fun.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn always springs to mind, and just about anything YA. Terry Pratchett is great too.

Why would you need anything else when you have PGW?

I think re-reading is the key to comfort reading. Apart from Wodehouse, books I've grabbed for hospital visits and other bad moments include:
- 19th century classics (Jane Austen, Mrs Gaskell, the Barchester novels...)
- Barbara Pym
- Dorothy L Sayers
- Simenon
- Patrick O'Brian

Really good travel books can be a helpful form of escapism too.

Graphic novels are good, they take less focus but still have engaging stories, plus nice art to look at! Otherwise, generally speedy thrillers or Agatha Christie kind of stuff.

Georgette Heyer

jasper fforde
or terry pratchett

which probably indicates my humour level.

Any Agatha Christie or Ngaio Marsh. Have read three of the former this week, while enduring a nasty chest infection.

D. E. Stevenson
Georgette Heyer
Nevil Shute (the ones with happy endings)
Elizabeth Cadell
Sarah Addison Allen
Lucilla Andrews
And some of the old books I loved as a child and teenager.

I have lots of comfort reads. They have to stand up well to re-reading, because that's part of what comfort is to me (familiarity), but optimism and humour are also required.

A few off the top of my head:
Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, especially the Guards subseries.
Georgette Heyer's regencies.
Lois McMaster Bujold has a few that work for me: Curse of Chalion and sequels, and (perhaps oddly) Memory, in which Miles Vorkosigan metaphorically shoots himself in the foot, and then picks up the pieces of his self-respect and moves on. Memory is not the best place to start if you're not familiar with the Vorkosigan books, but it works for me, having read them all many times.
Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series. These are kids' books from the 1930s, and I've loved them as long as I can remember.
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is a new favourite.
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley also newish and loved. The audiobook is also excellent and has companioned me through many long sessions in the kitchen.
Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow mysteries, starting with Murder with Peacocks. A long series, and all enjoyable.
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers - again, not the best starting point for the Peter Wimsey mysteries, but I love how Harriet and Peter interact.
Harry Potter! Can't forget those!

I'm sure I'm forgetting more than I've listed.

And I looked at the favourite authors list on my profile and found one that I missed: Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series, starting with Rivers of London. These are also excellent on audiobook.

>10 tardis: Better on audiobook first and then read the print version. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith IS Peter Grant.

>11 2wonderY: I prefer it the other way around - book first, then audiobook. I only listen to audiobooks of books I've already read because if I miss a bit I can still follow the plot. That said, you're right that Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is the perfect reader for those stories. He just nails it.

The Gallery of Regrettable Food
Gastroanomalies
Gross recipes with accompanying snarky comments does wonders for me.

>12 tardis: Is there a Peter Grant fan club around here anywhere? I am so impressed by the depth and breadth of knowledge he just casually interjects into his stories. I particularly relish his comments on architecture and immigrant culture. But then there is jazz, food, books, history and general science; not to mention the inner workings of the Metropolitan Police, warts and all.

Definitely Georgette Heyer's Regencies. And Connie Willis, especially her short stories and novellas like Spice Pogrom, Inside Job, and Uncharted Territory. Diana Wynne Jones. Caroline Stevermer's A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Eva Ibbotson's more adult books like A Song for Summer. And oh yes, The Rook!

>15 Marissa_Doyle: I need more of Willis' shorter fiction. Much as I loved Blackout and All Clear, they were rather looooong.

I also should have specified Heyer's regnancy books. Those are the one I have/read. I'm not a mystery reader much. I think I tried one of hers once.

Yes, I should have specified Heyer's regencies, too. I found most of her mysteries rather dreary.

If I'm ill, probably a short story anthology, a collection of anecdotes of one sort or another, something similar--bedtime reading, I suppose. Perhaps Atlas of Remote Islands is the ideal sick-room book. If feeling very low otherwise, undemanding comfort reading rubs me the wrong way; I often re-read Shakespeare's more melancholy sonnets when someone close to me died and that would somehow soften the edge for a while.

If I feel really bad, I pick up my Mallory Towers books... If it's not that bad, other re-reads also work, although some don't work anymore on account of having read them too often. David Eddings, for instance. Jean M. Auel. Some of the Mercedes Lackeys.

Now I might try Etiquette & espionage, or Jane Austen, or The goblin emperor, or Ancillary Mercy. Anything I really enjoyed and with likable characters will probably do. The long way to a small angry planet will become a comfort read, I think.

"Who Ordered This Truckload Of Dung?" by: Ajahn Brahm never fails to cheer me up & put things in perspective!

~A~ :-)

Cat books!!
The Dalai Lama's Cat
The Cat Who Went to Paris

Also The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

If I just want to get lost in something, but I don't feel overwhelmingly bad, I will pick up something with more oomph like a Barbara Kingsolver novel.

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries...

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

Robert

>24 Mr.Durick: You missed a trick there, signing with your real name rather than 'Ignatius J.'.

That is not my link to The Consolation of Philosphy. That said, once upon a time before LibraryThing got stuffed so full someone asked in a thread what fictional character we most identify with. I replied Ignatius Reilly; somebody commiserated.

Robert

It depends on the manner of down -- often, I fall in with the Terry Pratchett fans; however, if I am feeling a particularly nasty streak of blue, I might reread John Berryman's The Dream Songs.

The fact that _those_ poems cheer me up probably says something worrisome about my head.