Comfort Reads

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford (start there and read them all)

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamund Lehmann

Dusty Answer by Rosamund Lehmann

Anything by Georgette Heyer - maybe start with The Grand Sophy

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (and everything else she ever wrote)

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (also Nightingale Wood by the same author, which I didn't know but am now seeking out)

The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard (bliss, plus there are tons of them)

The Scotland Street books by Alexander McCall Smith

Forever Amber by Kathleen Windsor

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

Hens Dancing by Raffaella Barker

The Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin

What Ho, Jeeves, Code of the Woosters and Uncle Fred in the Springtime by PG Wodehouse (but any, really)

The Mapp and Lucia books by EF Benson

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Frenchman's Creek by Daphne Du Maurier

Mariana by Monica Dickens

The L-shaped Room by Lynn Reid Banks

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons by Lorna Handvik

The Miss Marple books by Agatha Christie

Riders and Rivals by Jilly Cooper (also the 'name' books - Bella, Imogen etc)

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

The Jackson Brodie books by Kate Atkinson

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

The Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L Sayers

The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith

The Molesworth books by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (not sure about including this. Not what you'd call a *cuddly* book)

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Not That Sort of Girl by Mary Wesley

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Darling Buds of May books by H.E. Bates (these also work marvellously if you're feeling fat - bonus)

from India Knight's Posterous

(I just love looking through other people's book lists.)