“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

I’ve written before about the best feel-good classic novels of all time, but that leaves so many uplifting books that have been published more recently.

For this post, I thought about my favourite feel-good novels (and some memoirs) from the last few years. Some books are lighthearted and funny, others are wholesome comfort reads.

Here’s my selection of the best feel-good books to lift your spirits when you’re feeling low, remind you of the good in the world, and bring a smile to your face.

The best feel-good books for happy reading

1. A Place Like Home by Rosamunde Pilcher

If you’re looking for a feel-good cozy book, start with Rosamunde Pilcher’s writing. She’s best known for the timeless classic The Shell Seekers, but this heartwarming collection of short stories (published in 2021) also offers a perfect slice of romance, warmth, passion, and indulgence.

Sarah Maine, bestselling author of Beyond the Wild River shared, “An antidote to challenging times, this set of stories from a much-loved author has a comforting, nostalgic feel – cosy and reassuring – with Rosamunde Pilcher’s signature insight into domestic hopes and yearnings, taking us into a gentler world.”

2. The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller

This full-hearted novel is an easygoing read about Olivia Rawlings, a big-city pastry chef extraordinaire who discovers the true meaning of home when she escapes from the city to the most comforting place she can think of – the idyllic town of Guthrie, Vermont.

This is meant to be just a short getaway, until Margaret Hurley, the cantankerous owner of the Sugar Maple Inn, offers Livvy a job. Broke and not sure what else to do next, Livvy accepts – and realises that the most unexpected twists and turns in life can be the best things to happen to you.

3. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is one of the very best authors for feel-good reading. In a thread about the funniest books, one Reddit user recommended: “Anything from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. I must have re-read some of his books 5 times and yet I still find something new that makes me laugh out loud each time.”

Here’s a useful reading order guide for the Discworld novels to make it easier to jump into the books. The Colour of Magic is a great place to start immersing yourself in the Discworld – a magical world not totally unlike our own, somewhere between thought and reality.

4. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

An instant bestseller for 2022, this feel-good book about an unlikely friendship between a widow and a giant Pacific octopus is perfect for fans of books like A Man Named Ove.

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

It’s here at the aquarium that Tova meets curmudgeonly Marcellus, an octopus who knows more than anyone can imagine… and deduces exactly what happened on the night that Tova’s son disappeared. Now he needs to put his intelligence to use and figure out how to show Tova the truth before it’s too late.

5. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

One of the true masterpieces of Japanese fiction, Yoko Ogawa turns mathematics into an elegant art in this beautiful, unpretentious and clever novel.

Each morning, the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to one another. Although the Professor’s mind is alive with mathematical equations, his short-term memory is a mere eighty minutes after a car accident threatened his life and ended his academic career some years ago.

With the clever maths riddles he devises – based on the Housekeeper’s birthday, her shoe size, or other little details – the two are brought together in a beautifully geeky classic love story that forms a bond deeper than memory.

6. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Described by Martha Wells as “an optimistic vision of a lush, beautiful world”, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers’s delightful Monk and Robot series gives us hope for the future (which, quite frankly, a lot of us could do with).

If you love Studio Ghibli-inspired books, I’d recommend grabbing a copy of A Psalm for the Wild-Built. In its unique world, it’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered together into the wilderness, and faded into myth and urban legend.

But one day, the life of a tea monk is turned upside down by a robot at their door. And most problematically, the robot wants an answer to the question of “what do people need?”

7. The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell

Tom Michell is in his twenties, free as a bird, and seeking adventure in South America around his teaching position in a prestigious Argentine boarding school.

What happens next is a little less ordinary: he rescues a penguin from an oil slick, and the penguin (who is soon named Juan Salvador) refuses to leave his side…. and returns back to school with him. It’s a delightfully uplifting and lighthearted memoir.

8. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

I read The Rosie Project all the way back in 2013 after it was published, and I still have such fond memories of this clever, warm, and delightfully weird love story.

Don Tillman is a brilliant yet completely socially inept professor of genetics who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. So he designs the Wife Project to find his ideal candidate, starting with a sixteen-page survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, and the late arrivers.

Unfortunately, Rosie Jarman drinks, smokes, and arrives late. She should be immediately disqualified as a candidate. And yet, somehow, Don is swept into the whirlwind that is Rosie as they collaborate on her own project to find her biological father.

9. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

As one of the most popular feel-good books of all time, this beautifully silly classic follows the galactic (mis)adventures of Arthur Dent, beginning one Thursday lunchtime when the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass.

10. All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot

In my selection of the best feel-good classic books, I knew I had to include All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. The Yorkshire vet’s memoirs have entranced generations of animal lovers since they were published, and they’re just as heartwarming today.

In this sequel, it’s wartime and James is training as an RAF pilot in bustling London. He’s far from the rolling hills, moody cattle, and curmudgeonly farmers of his day job as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales. He misses his dog, but most of all he misses his wife, Helen, who’s pregnant with their first child.

The questions of whether he’ll go to war and when he’ll get home are serious, but with its reflections of the land he loves and of friends old and new, this wonderfully cozy book is charming, uplifting, and characteristically funny.

11. The No. 1 One Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

In a Reddit thread about the best feel-good books, user bprflip shares: “When someone asks for a male-author-who-can-actually-write-a-female-lead, this book lands. It’s about someone getting by and making the world better, in incremental yet personal ways”.

If you enjoy following the investigations of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective, you’re in luck: this is the first in a series of twenty-three books by Alexander McCall Smith.

12. Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

I included TJ Klune’s most popular book, The House in the Cerulean Sea, in my list of the most wholesome books. This more recent release is a warm hug of a book for troubled times, perfect for fans of the feel-good hit A Man Called Ove or NBC’s The Good Place.

Wallace spends his life at the office, working and correcting colleagues. Then a reaper collects him, and he’s dead. Even after death, he refuses to make time for fun and friends, but as he drinks tea and eats scones with Hugo, the owner of an unusual tea shop, he wonders if he should do things differently.

With just one week until he must pass through the door to the other side, Wallace sets about living a lifetime the right way.

13. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Okay, so bear with me. This cozy feel-good book is about an Orc Warrior who opens a coffee shop. It’s a fun, incredibly lighthearted, and comfy read about following your dreams into new and unfamiliar places. It’s slice-of-life meets modern fantasy, and that turns out to be delightful.

Genevieve Gornichec, author of The Witch’s Heart, writes: “Take a break from epic battles and saving the world. Legends & Lattes is a low-stakes fantasy that delivers exactly what’s advertised: a wholesome, cozy novel that feels like a warm hug. This is my new comfort read.”

14. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Though Enzo cannot speak, he understands everything that happens around him as he bears witness to the story of his human family, observes how they nearly fall apart, and manages to bring them back together.

With humour and heartwarming dedication, and despite what he sees as his own limitations as a dog, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family in this wholesome feel-good book.

15. The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman

From the bestselling author of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, The Garden of Small Beginnings manages to be funny and heartwarming but also thoughtful and poignant.

As an intimate journey of a young mother moving on from grief, this quirky novel unlocks the door to Lilian Girvan’s life as an illustrator, parent, sister, budding gardener, and widow as she puts the pieces of her life back together.

The post 15 of the best feel-good books to brighten your day appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

After contemplating my favourites, I’ve compiled a list of recommendations to prove that happy and uplifting books don’t necessarily need to be modern and recently published.

But firstly, what even is a classic book? Let’s take a quick look inside Italo Calvino’s 1991 book Why Read the Classics?, in which he outlines fourteen definitions of a “classic”. These include:

6. A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.

10. A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

11. ‘Your’ classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it.

My classics may well be different from your classics, but at the very least, I hope this list can inspire you to find a few mood-boosting books of your own.

From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Kenneth Grahame and Elizabeth von Arnim, these are the classic feel-good books that bring a smile to my face, help me breathe a little deeper, and let me indulge in some lighthearted relaxation.

Which ones have you already read, and which ones can you add to your to-read list?

If you like these books and want to find some more recent feel-good book recommendations too, check out my list of the 10 most uplifting feel-good books to brighten your day.

The best feel-good classic novels of all time

1. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

What a book this is. Cider with Rosie is the classic evocative tale of an idyllic childhood in the English countryside, conjuring up evocative memories of life in a remote Cotswold village among the fields, woods, and characters of the place before industrialisation and with the backdrop of war.

“So with the family gone, Mother lived as she wished … Slowly, snugly, she grew into her background, warm on her grassy bank, poking and peering among the flowery bushes, dishevelled and bright as they. Serenely unkempt were those final years, free from conflict, doubt or dismay, while she reverted gently to a rustic simplicity as a moss-rose reverts to a wild one.”

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I can’t read Pride and Prejudice without feeling a little better about myself and the world. I know exactly what’s going to happen, but I still fall in love with the plot more every time. Fall into the world of the Bennett, Darcy, and Bingley families for dancing, ribbons, romance, and horseback rides at dawn.

I love this beautiful hardcover special edition by Fingerprint Publishing that also includes stunning endpapers.

“I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

3. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Elizabeth von Arnim often features in my bibliotherapy recommendations, and for good reason. The Enchanted April is her uplifting story of a group of London women who find each other—and the castle of their dreams—through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon.

As this wholesome comfort read continues, these four women escape the miserable English weather for an Italian castle covered in wisteria, where they rediscover their true natures and their joy.

“All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in color, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colors of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.

She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light.”

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

4. Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

I stumbled upon a copy of Three Men in a Boat by chance when I was in my teens, reading it with no idea of what to expect. But it’s such a wonderful feel-good novel to escape into for a weekend.

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames is just what they need. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather forecasts, and tins of pineapple chunks – not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.’s small fox-terrier Montmorency.

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing. ”

Three Men in a Boat

5. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Lift your mood and take some time to unwind with your pick of the four novels and fifty-six short stories about everyone’s favourite consulting detective.

6. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Leafing through the beautifully illustrated pages of The Wind in the Willows is a trip back to childhood for me. As one of the most charming pieces of English literature, let the book’s endearing protagonists – Mole, Mr. Toad, Badger, and Ratty – enchant you, no matter your age.

7. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

“James Herriot has been my comfort author for my whole life, everything is so cozy, warm, and light”, writes yeetcapsule on Reddit. Meet the world’s most beloved veterinarian – and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients – as he takes up his calling and discovers the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire.

“At times it seemed unfair that I should be paid for my work; for driving out in the early morning with the fields glittering under the first pale sunshine and the wisps of mist still hanging on the high tops.”

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien’s universe isn’t always light-hearted and fun, but it’s always magical. If I need a break or change of scenery, reading the first lines of The Hobbit is always a good idea.

“Where there’s life there’s hope.”

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

9. The BFG by Roald Dahl

How can you read Roald Dahl and not feel a little brighter and happier? I wasn’t sure whether to keep it on this list of classic literature, but for me, at least, it’s a classic (and Roald Dahl had such a huge influence on children’s literature.)

10. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Reddit user Jon-Umber describes Anne of Green Gables as “a relentlessly optimistic novel full of uplifting moments.” This feel-good classic follows Anne Shirley, a precocious Canadian orphan, who’s adopted by a brother and sister who soon change their mind about sending her back.

This much-loved classic explores all the vulnerability, expectations, and dreams of a child growing up, finding a place she can belong, and stepping into herself.

“Dear old world’, she murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

You might also like:

• 10 of the most uplifting feel-good books to brighten your day
• The most wholesome comfort reads for a hug from a book

The post 10 of the best feel-good classic books to lift your mood appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

“Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it.”
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

The post Why You Should Reread Your Favourite Novels (Again and Again) appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.