A friend was asking the other day for books in which no bad things happen, because with politics, pandemics, and polar vortices, sometimes you want your reading to be all upbeat. But yet, there aren’t many books where nothing bad happens. Myself, when I want comfort reading, I’ll settle for “everything all right at the end” which leaves me a much wider field. Nothing bad at all is really hard. I mean, you have to have plot, which means conflict, or at least things happening, and once you have obstacles to defeat there’s almost certain to be something bad.
Keep reading, because I do actually think of some.
Children’s books, suggests one friend.
Ha ha, no. Apart from the fact that some of the scariest things I’ve ever read have been children’s books—Catherine Storr’s Marianne Dreams and William Sleator’s Interstellar Pig for example—I realised some time ago that I am never going to be able to read Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy without crying. I mean I am never going to be grown up enough to get over it, there is no mature state in which I am still me where I will be able to read Ole Golly’s letter without bawling. Gary Schmidt, a children’s writer I discovered recently, is absolutely wonderful, but terrible, terrible things happen in his books, and it’s not even reliably all right at the end. He’s the person who made me think you have to earn your unhappy endings just as much as your happy ones. And William Alexander—again, terrific writer, terrible things happen.
There are some children’s books that almost qualify. One of my comfort reads is Arthur Ransome. He wrote a long series of books about kids messing about in sailboats on lakes in England in the 1930s, and nothing actually bad happens—except there’s a fog on the hills once, and there’s the time when the boat sinks in Swallowdale and John is so humiliated, and there is the scary bit where they get swept out to sea in We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea. (And it’s the 1930s, so their father in the Navy is going to be in WWII, and every adult in the books is complicit in appeasement and there are terrible things happening in Germany already…) But just on the surface, thinking about that little sailboat sinking, it makes me think you have to have bad things to overcome or you have no story.
So how about picture books for tiny kids?
Nope. In Martin Waddell and Barbara Firth’s Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear? the Little Bear can’t go to sleep and the Big Bear consequently can’t settle down and read his book, and all this is because Little Bear is afraid of the dark. Being scared of the dark is a bad thing, even if it gets happily fixed by the end of the story. In Penny Dale’s The Elephant Tree the elephant gets sadder and sadder on his quest to find his tree, until the children make a tree for him and make him happy. Don’t even think about Dr. Seuss and the terrible anxiety of having your house turned upside down by the Cat in the Hat or being forced to eat icky things by Sam-I-Am. (I don’t believe he actually liked them. I used to lie like that all the time when forced to eat things as a kid.) Then there’s Raymond Briggs The Snowman, which confronts you with mortality and the death of friends, thank you very much no. When I think of the picture books that are actually fun to read, they all have conflict and bad things. They certainly come into my category of “all OK in the end,” but they definitely have bad things.
Incidentally, apart from the fact they’d be very boring stories, I think kids need those bad things to learn from, and sometimes those awful moments are the most vivid and memorable—there’s a moment in Susan Cooper’s The Grey King which will be with me always, and it’s a bad moment.
But there are some stories that qualify, I think.
Romance. Pretty much all genre romance is “everything is OK at the end” but bad things happen in the meantime. But some Georgette Heyer has plots that work because bad things seem about to happen and are averted—this is different from everything being all right in the end, the bad things never occur, they are no more than threats that pass over safely. Cotillion does this. Two people are separately rescued by the heroine from iffy situations that could potentially become terrible, but they don’t. I think this counts. (It’s funny too.) That makes me think of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey in which the worst thing that happens is somebody exaggerates and somebody else has to go home alone on a stagecoach…that’s really not very bad. Right up there with the bear who can’t go to sleep.
Then there’s “Good King Wenceslas.” Somebody notices an injustice and sets out to redress it and succeeds. (OK, the page gets cold, but that also gets instantly fixed.) Zenna Henderson’s “Love Every Third Stir” is a version of this, though what the story is about is discovering the magic. I’m sure there are also old clunky SF versions of this. I want to say Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise. But I think there are others: person invents thing, everything is solved. Mostly more sophisticated versions of this are “it creates new problems.”
Utopia—somebody visits utopia and it really is. So More’s Utopia and Bacon, and Callenbach’s Ecotopia and other early naive utopias of this nature. Which makes me think about Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge but the way that book works without being naive is to have the actual story be sad—the softball team loses, the boy doesn’t get the girl, the old man dies in a storm. The worst thing that happens is gentle regret, but that’s bad too. But check out older utopias.
And now, my one actual real solid in-genre example of a book where nothing bad happens!
Phyllis Ann Karr’s At Amberleaf Fair is about a far future where people have evolved to be nicer, and there’s a fair, and a woodcarver who can make toys come to life, and there is sex and love and nothing bad happens and everything is all right. It’s gentle and delightful and I genuinely really like this odd sweet little book, and unless I’m forgetting something I don’t think anything bad happens at all.
If you have any suggestions please add them in comments—there’s at least one person actively looking for them.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published two collections of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections, a short story collection and thirteen novels, including the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Among Others. Her fourteenth novel, Lent, was published by Tor in May 2019. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here irregularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal. She plans to live to be 99 and write a book every year.
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is solidly in the “bad things _almost_ happen but then don’t” category for me, but I’m not sure if it would be enjoyable to anyone who didn’t have several books’ worth of emotional investment in Bujold’s characters.
The Goblin Emperor is a deeply comforting book for me, but of course it begins right off with a Bad Thing.
Trying to remember: Were there any actual bad things in Erin Morgenstern’s Night Circus?
I like this post – definitely looking for happy books at the moment. Went ahead and ordered Amberleaf Fair – thanks for recommendation!
Wow. Tough.
Children’s books.
Teddy Robinson was a teddybear who seemed to spend a lot of his time on the toy shelf in his owners bedroom, musing. I can’t remember anything bad ever happening to him. Or indeed, anything at all. Olga-da-Polga has a pretty low level of jeopardy. And did the magic pudding get stolen? Was that it? Is Sylvie & Bruno a children’s book?
Adult books.
Ulysses (ie, the book by James Joyce). Bloom is in a similar position to Teddy Robinson, in that he has plenty of time to ruminate and (inversely) very little to actually do. Three Men in a Boat (they do see a drowned person though). Most of Wodehouse’s books are about delayed gratification/averting a potential disaster: I don’t think anything bad happens per se. I’m currently re-reading Aegypt and enjoying it, but nothing bad has happened yet, and surely I’d remember if it did? Maybe things don’t work out with Rosie? It was thirty years ago.
Also, The Pickwick Papers.
I was going to say Melville’s The Confidence Man, but even after several readings, I’m not sure what happens in that book.
There is a genre in which No Bad Things Happen: Hallmark movies.
Sarah Addison Allen’s books tend to be full of whimsy and loveliness, and rarely anything worse than a few cross words or misunderstanding.
I was just saying more-or-less this on another post, but Sharon Shinn’s fantasy novels sometimes dial the conventional stakes way down and rely primarily on well-developed character dynamics. The Dream-Maker’s Magic, in particular, does have a few (small, often offstage) episodes of misfortune but is mostly about the nature of luck and happiness – a lot of interesting people figuring out their paths to the lives they want, through supernatural and ordinary means as applicable. Very little villainy or typical tension, and yet it works well. I went back and looked at my notes from the first time I read it, and observed that I didn’t once stop to wonder whether the story was getting uneventful. Nearly everyone in the story ends up being likable and worth rooting for.
The Prince and the Dressmaker, graphic novel by Jen Wang. It’s a heartwarming story with lovely art, where the worst thing that happens is the characters suffer some temporary disappointments, which turn out to have saved them from worse long-term consequences.
When major bad news happens, romance sales always spike. Happily-ever-after is a very strong power. Classic STAR TREK has always been a go-to for many of us with its belief in a generally sane and peaceful future, as well. Sure, bad things happen in both, but a happy ending must be earned.
“Spindle’s End”, by Robin McKinley is firmly in the “bad things are threatening to happen but never do” including (spoiler) sleeping beauty never falls asleep. There’s a big battle at the end which isn’t really a battle, and nothing bad ever happens to the main character and everyone loves happily ever after.
“Discount Armageddon”, by Seanan McGuire, maybe? Honestly, all I remember are the mice and the dragon, buy I remember it being very fluffy fun. Don’t read the sequel, though, if you’re looking for nothing bad.
“I, Robot”, by Asimov, has a lot of stories where nothing bad happens. Actually, a lot of Asimov.
(Romance is bad, really bad things happen all of the time, but the guaranteed happy ending usually gets me through it.)
In “Good Omens” the world doesn’t actually end, and there only bad thing I can think of is Agnes Nutter bring killed, which isn’t part of the plot or the main characters so maybe it doesn’t count?
Tons of good and really needed tips here, thanks!!
I’m sure there are books out there where the plot is “We try until we succeed” — that doesn’t mean it sucks now, only that we’re not there yet. “The Little Engine that Could” leaps to mind. Are there SFF stories like that? Perhaps, I’d have to think about it. It could be dull, though, if the attempts to get there don’t have serious setbacks, i.e. Something Bad Happens. Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” is close, but of course there is a bad thing in the background (no spoilers). How about NK Jemisin’s “L’Alchimista”?
@1 Well, there is the rain of flaming snot. [spoiler]
hoopmanjh @2–the clockmaker who was killed. (And why can’t I remember his name? I re-read the story a couple of months ago.) Also, there were the 2 sisters who helped create the circus, and 1 of them ended up walking in front of a train.
But I still love the book.
I thought of another one after I finished the post, which I was writing for some time as events overtook me!
Tove Jansen’s Comet in Moominland, and indeed most of the Moomin books. But Comet in Moominland comes firmly into the category of “threat averted”.
For when I wake up in the middle of the night, I have exactly such “comfort reads” loaded onto my Kindle, good for a few pages or a few chapters, whichever I need. I just finished Groucho and Me by Groucho Marx; every other line is a snide remark, naturally. Nick Mason’s memoir of being in Pink Floyd, Inside Out serves a similar purpose. Stepping back into the realm of fiction, there’s the Gormenghast trilogy — the characters are dire, but in a wry comedic fashion, and events happen so slowly the typical narrative friction isn’t there. Next in the queue is Starship Titanic by Terry Jones…
Can’t think of too many books that fit this bill but the classic example of this is from film: My Neighbor Totoro. Unless you believe one of the alternative theories out there which I suggest you avoid at all costs if you’re a fan of this film, it kind of ruins it in a dark and tragic way.
@10 Maybe you are reading the wrong romances. Nora Roberts does the weird romance viewpoint thing, but she’s a first-rate writer across genres. Illona Andrews of Kate Daniels urban fantasy fame has written romance fantasy series including “The Edge” and her Innkeeper science fiction series. That’s just two off the top of my head.
@@.-@ Wodehouse, yes!
Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl includes tween/early teen tantrums and rows resolved, a few romantic crises averted, a not-as-bad-as-it-could-have-been velocipede accident, and one SPOILER financial crisis to which most of the characters react with self-sacrifice and hard work.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read them, but Eleanor Estes’ books, particular the ones about the Moffat family, would be good reads at this time, and the same goes for Elizabeth Enright’s books about the Melendy family in The Saturdays and its sequels, and Sydney Taylor’s All-of-A-Kind Family books.
Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy and Deep Valley books fall into the not-many-crises list . . . SPOILERS mostly romantic heartbreak, and the few losses are offstage.
In most of P.G. Wodehouse, nothing worse usually happens other than a certain amount of embarrassment.
Among Star Trek books specifically, John M. Ford’s How Much For Just The Planet? almost certainly fits this criteria (as long as you overlook a couple of spilled milkshakes, anyway). Depending on how much one worries about bad things threatening to happen — the central plot is a save-the-doomed-spaceship race, and there are definitely setbacks along the way — I might also recommend David Gerrold’s The Galactic Whirlpool from the early Bantam run, in which the spaceship is in fact saved in significant part by the clever and timely deployment of balloon animals.
Not all of the Oz books qualify, I don’t think, but Emerald City of Oz might — the half of the book about Uncle Henry and Aunt Em moving to Oz is basically a benign road trip, and the Bad Thing the Nome King is planning in the other half is very neatly derailed at the end.
Another prospect might be Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Sherwood Ring; there’s no serious malice or menace in the modern side of the plot, and for all that the other half is happening during the American Revolution, the nominal adversaries conduct themselves in admirably well-behaved fashion and no real mayhem actually occurs onstage.
Certain of Patricia Wrede’s books may well qualify here too (I’d need to reread to be sure of which, but I think that most if not all the genuine threat of harm in the Sorcery and Cecilia sequence is averted rather than actual, and the Enchanted Forest quartet is similar in this regard). The run of modern comic fantasy in which Esther Friesner was a significant force (Elf Defense, New York By Knight) might be worth a look, though it’s been a long time since I’ve looked at those.
Out of our genre, one or two of Dorothy Gilman’s non-Pollifax books may be a fit (I am thinking particularly of A Nun in the Closet).
And although it is long out of print and hard to find, I will put in a word for Linda Haldeman’s The Lastborn of Elvinwood, in which certain denizens of a modern English village find themselves tasked to save a colony of Shakespearean faeries, some with more enthusiasm than others (especially where dealing with Merlin himself is concerned). There is a willing sacrifice in it, but no true harm, and the storytelling is charming in the very best sense of that word.
My favorite comfort books:
The Moomin books by Tove Jansson
The Wind in the Willows
anything by Alexander McCall Smith, but the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series is my favorite
The worst thing that happens in Jane Austen’s Emma is the protagonist being wrong about everything. Which sucks for her but is nothing but fun for the reader.
I’m with you. Right now, I’m just not into books that are hard on the protagonist or that contain a lot of angst or Stürm und Drang, violence, mahem, calamity or anything remotely apocalyptic.
Pooh! for Heaven’s sake. Milne’s Pooh books are the epitome of innocence. Just that last little bit at the end of the last book.
Kipling’s “Just So Stories” if only for the gloriously elaborate language, O best beloved.
Kenneth Graham’s “The Wind in the Willows” — though the bit about the weasels and stoats is a bit iffy.
Anything by P. G. Wodehouse. There are tempests in Sir Pelham’s ouvre, but they are largely confined to teapots and the only thing the “hero” is deprived of are inappropriate fiancees and articles of gentlemanly attire which are in questionable taste. (And you can get a .mobi format omnibus edition of all the Jeeves and Wooster stories for free on Amazon.)
Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate and Finishing School series feature some unpleasant things, and some machinations, but overall they are like petite fours with unexpected nuts in the cake bit, but so tasty you don’t mind. Love eventually triumphs and hunkydoryness reigns anew. It’s steampunk but done with a light touch, and the prose is delicious.
Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books are a snort and utterly hilarious, particularly if you get all the literary allusions.
Bujold’s “Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance” is good, although none of the usual suspects appear in it (i.e., the Vorkosigans). People get stun-gunned, and a hostile takeover happens off stage, but nobody actually dies. Pure Bujold and quite delightul. I read it in one sitting.
T.J. Klune’s “Tales of Verania” are snarky, snippy, silly and way over the top. However, if you don’t like Drag Race, you probably won’t like these.
M.C.A. Hogarth has a series called “The Dreamhealers”, starts with “Mindtouch”. These are sweet, slice of life books. There is some drama, a little bitter sweet, but mostly it’s soft and gentle, and I love the main characters dearly. These are quiet, easy books, even with the bits of heartbreak. They are not my usual fare, but they have become favorites.
@21: ugh, no, not Lastborn. Puck spends the entire book being a vicious, psychotic little scumbag and then gets rewarded at the end with a fairy bride made from a human baby. It makes my skin crawl.
Another vote for the Moomins though. A lot of Noel Streatfeild. Barbara Sleigh’s Carbonel books. A A Milne’s Once Upon A Time (I stan Belvane). Noel Langley’s The Land of Green Ginger (well, barring the Occasional Threat of Boiling Oil).
I just posted about my favorite comfort reads on the Goblin Emperor thread. Not all of my comfort reads are books where nothing bad happens, but all are deeply humane books with empathy, humor and a happy ending. SFF: The Goblin Emperor, A Civil Campaign, Remnant Population, Od Magic (and others by Patricia McKillip). On my TBR pile: Harry Connolly’s A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark, which I think will qualify. And beyond SFF: Elinor Lipman’s The Family Man, Lissa Evans’ Crooked Heart, Jill Paton Walsh’s A Presumption of Death (for feminists who love the Peter Wimsey mysteries), and Mathangi Subramanian’s A People’s History of Heaven (girls and women in a slum in India, but it’s very hopeful; it came out last year and I’ve already read it twice). I can think of lots of children’s books which work for me as comfort reading; although bad things may happen in them, nothing feels very threatening to an adult reader in these. Stephanie Burgis’ The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart, Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men, Emily Raabe’s Lost Children of the Far Islands, and lots of the humorous fantasies by Eva Ibbotson–my favorite is Island of the Aunts. And The Ogre of Oglesfort, and… Likewise, the short stories of Margaret Mahy or Jackie Vivelo.
Then there are comic books and graphic novels, both for all ages (Ryan North’s Unbeatable Squirrel Girl!! Can’t recommend it too highly, for a pick-me-up! And Don Rosa’s Uncle Scrooge comics, now collected in beautiful hardcovers by Fantagraphics) and for kids (Lumberjanes–especially the first two trade paperbacks, Kat Leyh’s Snapdragon, Matthew Loux’s Salt Water Taffy and Time Museum series, Ben Hatke’s Zita the Spacegirl series….).
I don’t read romance (other than A Civil Campaign!); the genre I do sometimes read that has reliably happy endings and nothing too distressing is the cozy mystery. True, someone is generally murdered, but that death is more of a puzzle than a tragedy, the main characters are likeable, and the world is reassuring. I don’t tend to re-read any of those, though, aside from the first few Faith Fairchild mysteries by Katherine Hall Page.
The Rolling Stones, by Robert Heinlein, has a bad thing happen but it turns out okay in the end. Which, given the previous mention of Georgette Heyer, reminds me that Frederica has a similar incident that also turns out all right in the end.
I think the Becky Chambers novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate may fit the category, but I’d need to reread it to be sure.
For me, Pamela Dean’s books are comfort reading, but I can’t say that nothing bad happens in them.
Seconding (thirding, or fourthing) Wodehouse, of course. And there is some YA literature which is not about young people dying of cancer or post-apocalyptic struggle: I recommend E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, for humor and feminist satisfaction.
I can’t remember why the children leave home, but I don’t recall anything bad happening in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Cozy mysteries are a subgenre that usually doesn’t have anything bad happen (well, aside from the requisite murder, which usually happens off-stage and perhaps before the novel even starts).
Eleanor Farejon?
26. The boiling oil bit was the only thing that made me exclude ‘The Land of Green Ginger’. It’s such a fun read. I don’t even think you could accuse Langley of resorting to stereotypes as he seems to have – unintentionally, I assume – set his story in some sort of hybrid of China and Persia.
@24: I love “Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance”–the audiobook is very well done, by the way–and would love to see more of Ivan’s interesting in-laws.
I’d also add Stella Gibbons’ “Cold Comfort Farm” to this list.
In YA, I give you Lloyd Alexander’s The Arkadians and The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian. What fun!
In adult literature, the first thing that came to mind was Hannu Rajaniemi’s collection Invisible Planets. Many of the stories, such as “The Server and the Dragon” and the titular one, are so post-human that it’s hard to conceive of anything being truly “bad” or upsetting; every possible harm is just a minor inconvenience in the face of the technological sublime.
The second book that came to mind was Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, but skimming through it again makes me think I was just in a good mood when I read it the first time…
It’s been a while so I may have forgotten if a bad thing happens, but children’s author Astrid Lindgren has a lovely “slice of life” book called the Children of Noisy Village, written about six children growing up in the early 1900s. I think her Pippi Longstocking books are pretty free of bad things too. I also second “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler,” one of my favorites!
The books of “Miss Read”. Gentle tales of village life in the UK after World War II. Also it’s spiritual ancestor,
“Cranford” by Mrs Gaskell
Stella GIbbons’ “Cold Comfort Farm”
Almost anything ever written by P G Wodehouse
Andy Weir, “The Martian”. I suppose the bad thing that happens is that he is stranded on Mars, but it is all such a joyous, life-and-science affirming book (and film!) that I’ve listed it here.
Not a book, but the Miyazaki cartoon, “Kiki’s Delivery Service”
I love the Robert Asprin Myth Series
It’s a fantasy series which started some time.
Nothing really bad happens besides misunderstandings and mishaps
just fun to read with some action. So much fun and I’ll probably restart it quite soon again 
@17, @35: To My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service I would add Whispers of the Heart and The Cat Returns. Both of the latter films are about an adolescent girl figuring out her way in life. Nothing very bad happens in either of them, although some disasters are averted. They also feature fantasy worlds with incredible visuals combined with charming vignettes of everyday life in urban Japan.
For that matter, Porco Rosso and Ponyo are both about potentially awful subject matter (pirates on the verge of a world war, world-ending magic getting loose) but are told as romps in which nothing very bad can actually happen. Porco’s and Gina’s war trauma is alluded to, and Ponyo’s mother is rather matter-of-fact about Ponyo potentially going the way of the Little Mermaid if the magic she set in motion is not handled correctly. But the pirates who bedevil Porco are also a bunch of loveable goofs who can be hornswoggled by a pack of preteen girls, and the typhoon/megatide/magical explosion in Ponyo is 99 percent sensawunda, 1 percent uh-oh.
How about Connie Willis’ “To Say Nothing of the Dog”? There are references to bad things that happened in the past (ie, World War 2), and there is plenty of rushing around and fretting about the course of history (all as per usual for Connie Willis), but the stakes feel very low and it all makes for a remarkably happy novel. While still being engaging and fun and lovable, one of my favorites.
I also second the nominations of Bujold’s “Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance”. Despite a few somber moments, nothing actually bad actually happens, and most of the book is purely delightful. Ivan as a character is very well suited to screwball comedy.
Dianna Wynne Jones’ “Tough Guide to Fantasy”, it’s not a story of course, but it has a lot that makes me laugh and no bad things happen.
Much as I love Elizabeth Moon’s “Remnant Population”, mentioned above, bad things do happen in it.
Personally I find cookery books soothing to read, serious ones like those by Jane or Sophie Grigson, Elisabeth David, Claudia Roden, Lynsey Bareham or Madhur Jafrey.
Astrid Lindgren’s Bullerbü and Lönneberger books.
Slice of life anime like nichijou, and some less known Ghibli movies like omoide poro poro.
@25 I love Dreamhealers. There are some bad things that happen in it, but overall it’s very cozy. I’ve seen the author refersto that series as her “milk and cookies” books. Warning: if you’re looking for kind and gentle, be careful about the author’s other interlocking series. They’re excellent, and the events in them add great depth to the characters from Dreamhealers, but lots of bad things happen.
@28 To Be Taught, if Fortunate is very good and much of it is kind and gentle but there’s one scene I found harrowing that lingered with me for some time.
Interesting question and responses.
@25 and @41, I LOVE the Dreamhealers series. I read them towards the end of my pregnancy, and they were the perfect soothing balm I needed.
In the article and comments I’m finding books in the to be read–when the library is open again!–and to be reread categories :).
E.F. Benson’s Mapp & Lucia series, except for two off-stage deaths, falls into this category, with plenty of Wodehousian comedy and crises averted or overcome–and consequences demolished.
@39, the 1961 New York Times Cookbook is a good read, including its occasional informative and sometimes wryly humorous comments on recipes.In one note we find out that Napoleon’s chef garnished a casserole with fried eggs and crawfish!!!
@38: Connie Willis’ Bellwether has a variety of annoyances and inconveniences afflict the protagonist, but nothing really bad happens (the worst that anyone is even concerned about is not getting funding for a project). It’s delightful.
I loved LOVED Station 11 by Emily St. John. It’s a post-apocalyptic setting, but before you run screaming, all of the bad stuff has already happened 20 years in the past (okay, okay, “most” of the bad stuff). And now, a group of troubadours travels up and down the east coast of lake Michigan putting on Shakespeare plays. It’s a wonderful story with a hopeful and upbeat ending.
For picture books there’s there’s The Napping House by Audrey Wood — nothing bad happens at all. And I don’t think anything bad happens in Daniel Pinkwater’s The Big Orange Splot.
It’s been too long for me to be sure, but I’m pretty sure that Pinkwater’s fiction for older kids (think Lizard Music or The Hoboken Chicken Emergency) would make good comfort reading. Though I can’t swear that nothing that could be considered bad happens, I’m fairly sure it’s low-intensity ‘bad’.
“The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish” by Neil Gaiman would qualify, I think.
I read a lot of indy SF. Cici and The Curator by S.J. Wynde is whimsical and hilarious and made me happy; a couple of slightly bad things happen, but all is right in the end. The Twelve Days of Christmas by Linda Jordan is a marvelous story of aliens trying to understand humans through a Christmas song and is full of warm feels and hilarity.
People have covered most of my favorites, but here are some more good Georgette Heyer books: A Civil Contract (one of the mothers of Bujold’s Campaign), where the worst thing that happens is that people’s illusions about first love are dispelled; Venetia, a really funny look at the “reforming the rake” trope (with some mild verbal thoughtlessness about (not to) a disabled person); False Colors, where a twin takes his brother’s place, leading to a total of 3 marriages; The Nonesuch, a Cinderella story where the worst problem is coping with a spoiled teenager. One of my top favorites is The Unknown Ajax, a “Prince in disguise” story with an unhappy starting point and some peril in the last quarter, but concludes as a masterpiece of sustained comedy – also extra added quotations from a relatively obscure Shakespeare play (Troilus and Cressida). Heyer can be tiresomely classist, like a lot of authors of her vintage, but she’s endlessly entertaining, well written, kind hearted and often very funny.
Dr Seuss. I suggest, ‘One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish’ and ‘Green Eggs and Ham’.
‘Where’s Spot?’
Many of the Mister Men and Little Miss books
Alison Uttley books
I’d go for By the Sword by Mercedes Lackey. Yes there are some dark bits, but there is also the most uplifting part of the ending I think I’ve ever read
@43 Now would be a great time to look in to your library’s online ebooks.
@@@@@ 0, Jo Walton:
Incidentally, apart from the fact they’d be very boring stories, I think kids need those bad things to learn from, and sometimes those awful moments are the most vivid and memorable—there’s a moment in Susan Cooper’s The Grey King which will be with me always, and it’s a bad moment.
A friend of mine was living across the continent when she had two girls. I mailed bundles of book for them, and suggestions for others. Most of these were aimed at the elder girl. Her three-year-younger sibling grabbed the books as soon as here sister finished them. She was constantly reading stuff that was too old for her. It did no harm that I could see.
I listed classics like Puck of Pook’s Hill, The Raven, and Treasure Island. But most of it was Science Fiction and Fantasy. Things like Byfield’s Andrew and the Alchemist. James H. Schmitz’s The Witches of Karres, and Telzy Amberden. Anne McCaffrey’s Pern was a big hit. So were Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar stories. As they got older, the fell in love with Louis McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books.
Somewhere along the line my friend opined that my recommendations let children know that there were bad people and evil things in the world. But that good people doing the right things could defeat them. Such stories prepared children to confront life’s challenges. Compared to the sanitized children’s books of the day, Pern and the Hub, Valdemar and Barrayar, were more realistic.
I agreed with her, but added, “Which is more than a little odd. Considering that the books are full of talking dragons, and magical pre-teen girls, and telepathic horses, and artificial wombs, and faster than light travel.”
Fred Poul’s The Kindly Isle might qualify. Granted, there are bad things in the protagonist’s past. But the worst thing that happens to him is that he spends a little time with humorless security agents.
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781625791467/9781625791467___3.htm
I like Theodore Sturgeon’s The Skills of Xandu. The worst thing that happens is that the alien spy gets a hole in the seat of his pants.
http://www.luisfilipeteixeira.com/fileManager/file/Sturgeon-Xanadu.pdf
I have fond memories of The Maggie B by Irene Hass. I guess one could say the storm that blows in could be considered a “bad thing.” However, I would argue Margaret and her little brother James handled it with complete confidence and zero panic.
Oh, yes, Zenna Henderson, especially Love Every Third Stir. Time for a re-reading…
Alice in wonderland. Nothing bad happens, she gets a bit scared but really it’s just all a bit confusing for her.
I was going to say Totoro as well but it is actually about a the kids coming to terms with a sick mum and they get special veggies to take to her.
Charlie and the chocolate factory and great glass elevator, nothing happens to charlie other than flying a bit high and getting a bit chewed out for disobeying a rule most of it is just amazement. Most of Dahl’s stuff is similar including his adult stuff, uncle oswald is just an accounting of some shenanigans in the pursuit of money.
As long as people are mentioning Heyer:
Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle, which is partly about a man getting his head out of his butt, partly about finding work-life balance as a woman in a patriarchal world, and partly about the excesses of fandom. (He: Thinks he can just pick out a wife from the wife store, because he shut up his heart in a box after a bereavement years ago and he is very rich. She: Knows that her marriage prospects are dismal but has found a path to security as an anonymous author. He: Behaved like an ass to her. She: Used his unmistakable eyebrows for her villain. He; Put her on his shopping list. Her dingleheaded fandom: Thinks she used his face for a melodramatic villain because she has inside info. Uh-oh.)
Arabella: Her lower-middle-class country parson father scraped together the money to send her to London for one glorious Season. She had carriage trouble and was given hospitality by a man who had reasons to be highly suspicious of pretty girls of marriageable age who Just Happen to need his help. She pretended not to need anybody’s help because rich. He saw right through it and decided to have some fun. When she got to London, everybody thought she was loaded. Uh-oh.
As has been said, Heyer’s characters are appallingly classist (but they would be, wouldn’t they?) and some unpleasantness is alluded to in each book. But nothing really bad actually happens.
Maybe my favourite ‘nothing bad actually happens’ book is Connie Willis’s Bellweather, which is among the most fun books I’ve ever read while simultaniously having the highest-action moment in the book be sheep acting like sheep. An exploration of trends and chaos theory and the art of being human through the lens of everyday office monotony. It’s wonderful.
My full list of recommendations for ‘nothing bad ever actually happens’ books are as follows:
1. Bellweather, by Connie Willis
2. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg
3. To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
4. The Fire Within, by Chris D’Lacey
Well, I guess these recommendations confirm that I really DO have an anxiety disorder.
Note: I may be mis-describing these books, because I shied away.
I tried to read Wind in the Willows at about age 8. It seemed to be a series of events where someone humiliated himself again and again. As a bullied child, humiliation was the worse thing that had ever happened to me (first world problem). I still can’t stand I Love Lucy.
I enjoyed To Say Nothing of the Dog on my first read. But on my second read (looking for fun at a prior low point in my life), it seemed to be a series of people being horribly frustrated by others while trying to accomplish something important. IOW, human nature is completely hopeless, and Willis writes it so well!
I can re-read Heyer because it’s only the secondary characters who are hopeless or humiliated (and not very awfully). The H and h are always the very smartest people in sight, and they eventually get their lives right. But inherently classist, agreed.
And this reinforces why I’ve mostly been reading middle grade fantasies the last few years. The “bad” is so low-stakes.
@56 The bad thing that happens to Violet Beauregarde haunted my childhood for a long time.
Anything by Nevil Shute! (Except ‘On the Beach’)
Nancy: I was also thinking a lot of books recommended in comments are things that have a high level of anxiety and humiliation. There’s a reason I recommended Cotillion and not the whole of Heyer.
Willis’s Bellwether is however a total win, there’s nothing bad in it, and I should have thought of it. I think Uncharted Territory would also count.
The perfect books for self isolation reading are Asimov’s space mysteries the Lije Bailey series, especially the second book, The Naked Sun, which is all about a society based on isolation.
Noel Streatfeild’s children’s books for me. Also, love Swallows and Amazons, et al
Time to reread Cotillion!
For a modern Wind in the Willows take, there is Kij Johnson’s The River Bank.
@15 Although Comet in Moominland is great, I’m not sure it qualifies here: the threat is averted in that the world wasn’t destroyed, but first the sea completely dried up, which has got to be a bad thing even though it gets refilled later.
In Pacific Edge, which I also love, the utopia is for real but it’s also not guaranteed; Robinson makes it clear that the political and business interests that resisted the utopia in the first place haven’t really gone away at all, they’re much less influential now but there’s still a constant pushback and it’s suggested that this sometimes is violent. It’s a really odd tone where there’s this sort of legal-thriller plot involving corruption and arson but it’s all in the context of a society that’s generally a lot saner than ours, so it still feels relatively pastoral even though from the point of view of these characters it’s really terrible that this kind of corruption exists at all.
@56 Charlie himself has a pretty good time in those books, but all kinds of horrible things happen to others… in Great Glass Elevator a whole lot of people are eaten by Vermicious Knids!
@15 How about Moominland Midwinter? It’s got some melancholy and anxiety in it, but the only real problems are 1. Moomintroll misses his hibernation cycle and has to stay awake through the winter—but that turns out to be cool, because he gets to see a different world and meet Too-Ticky—and 2. an anonymous squirrel may have frozen. Almost the entire story is just exploring new places and meeting people.
We need to laugh and Bill Bryson has always made me laugh out loud. A Walk In The Woods, for example, is hilarious. He has a perspective on things that brings out the absurd. In one book his description of a cricket match in Australia, for example, is a classic.
The book that came to mind for me is The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart, a book of linked stories about how the world would be perfect if run by feminist women. My recollection (possibly flawed) is that the bad things that happen are basically off-stage, as the only fly in the ointment of the harmonious world the renegade protagonists have constructed is that there’s still a world “elsewhere” that’s ruled by men and therefore full of violence and injustice. The premise (that women, or any sort of humans, could/would build a perfectly harmonious world) always seemed to me ridiculous, and the book, for that reason, not very good. But it was extremely popular around 1980.
Tom Jones, Fielding; I Capture the Castle, Smith; Pickwick Papers, Dickens; The Queen and I, Townsend; Dear Committee Members, Schumacher; The World’s Largest Man, Key; The Rosie Project, Simsion; Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, Smollett; Decline and Fall, Waugh; Kim, Kipling; Lorna Doone, Blackmore. So, you see – my Audible library is chock full of escapist lit, mostly funny. And Regency Buck is my fav Heyer. Was so happy to see that someone mentioned An Old Fashioned Girl – a nostalgic fav. Trying to decide if the thefts of the Dutch Baroque Cow-Creamer in The Code of the Woosters constitute, “something bad”.
A couple of the recent messages have jogged my memory in the direction of another recommendation (again with the caveat that it’s been a very long time since my last reread): The Mouse That Roared and its sequels by Leonard Wibberley, concerning the affairs of the exceedingly tiny and inocuous Duchy of Grand Fenwick. In this first book, the duchy is on the verge of insolvency, which its leadership concludes can be best avoided by declaring war against the USA…and losing, thereby triggering a massive infusion of foreign aid. Matters are complicated, however, when Grand Fenwick accidentally manages to win the war. There’s political satire here, yes, but it’s of a far gentler and more gentlemanly sort than one sees in more recent material, and the overall tone is whimsical. There’s a film adaptation, featuring Peter Sellers in one of his zanier multiple-role turns; it’s not badly done, but I prefer the book to the movie.
Ms. Walton: Delighted to learn that someone else is looking for a story where “no bad things happen.” I am a retired high school teacher and first-time writer, trying to write a fictional biographic (historical) novel. I have re-written the opening pages a couple of times in an effort to “plunge the protagonist into the water without a life-preserver” on the first pages. Augh! Not the “story” I want to write (yet), but according to various authorities on what publishers will buy, the only way to sell a book. And, as you say, “I mean, you have to have plot, which means conflict, or at least things happening, and once you have obstacles to defeat there’s almost certain to be something bad.” Yes, yes, yes, a good plot requires “bad things happening,” but I suspect the issue is the level to which a story must express or exploit “a bad thing,” i.e., how “bad” must the bad things be when constructing those “obstacles” the protagonist must conquer?
So. The atrocities of war, the suffering of dire poverty, the evils of rape, incest, and sex trafficking, the inhumanities of civilization—Why is a book considered “literate,” “noteworthy,” or marketable only if it portrays or deals with “bad things” that are so horrific, gruesome, perverse, heinous, violent, or gut wrenching? These can and should be elements of some literature, but, as your quest suggests, I believe that a book can have a plot in which the conflicts and/or obstacles are far less dramatic. Can’t a plot be knit together with lovely scenes that give the reader a glimpse of other, an escape, or an opportunity to empathize, reminisce, or ponder? What kinds of obstacles or conflict pace and propel such lovely scenes?
Existence—actuality, experience, survival—intrinsically supposes tension and conflict. Tension is natural in cyclic seasons, reflected in the passage of time and rites of passage; tension is embraced in the process of birth, against the anxieties of sickness, injury, and the fear of death. Toss into the mix the tensions inherent in the psychologic and emotional structures of religion and culture, not to mention the conflicts imposed by accidents of geo-political demographics—telling any story without “bad things happening” is rendered impossible. But, as I have heard editors and agents claim, nobody cares about such mundane bad things. The bad things inherent to existence happen to everybody, and nobody will spend money on a book about such boring, commonplace, ordinary bad things.
Really, truly?
Give me enchanting, vivid settings; lovable or despicable characters in relatable relationships; events in time expressed with captivating language, musical words and gripping dialogue. If a wordsmith can weave these together, into flowing imagery, then normal bad things should be enough, don’t you think? I keep hoping so. This is the novel I wish to write. I keep plodding, speculating and plotting.
About two years ago, I read a piece (Writer’s Digest, hard copy so I didn’t save it) on an emerging genre called “gentle reads.” Google “Gentle Reads,” and I think the lists of titles that pop up are the closest thing to plots in which “bad things don’t happen” that can be found. I aspire to putting my debut novel on such a list, and I hope readers out there will continue to look for books in which no bad things happen!
I’m pretty sure nothing bad happens in Rendezvous with Rama.
For SF, basically everything by E. M. Foner – the Union Station series, and his new Assisted Living series as well. Written specifically to be super-light.
For mystery, the entire sub-genre of “cozy mysteries.” There’s usually a murder, almost always off-screen, to set things going – but after that, they’re typically character stories about quirky frequently small-town-English, folk.
And generally, the entire category of Humor books, fiction and non-fiction.
Emil’s Pranks, Emil and Piggy Beast, and Emil in the Soup Tureen by Astrid Lindgren don’t have anything bad happen except for the perennial trope of Emil being locked in the toolshed when he misbehaves. (It is a nice toolshed with a window, not a rat-infested black hole.)
I was about to say Booth Tarkington (Penrod; Seventeen), but I read them a long time ago and my conscience tells me that I am forgetting too much racism.
My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell, although the terrible video series may have ruined it for most folks.
Henry Kuttner’s Galloway stories: the collection I have (Robots Have No Tails) is so old it was published by Lancer, but Amazon alleges there is a more recent republcation.
I think of Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet in this way, but wouldn’t expect anybody to agree.
Mostly I think I turn to old comics: 50s and 60s Peanuts. Calvin and Hobbes. Out Our Way. All things Crockett Johnson. Little Lulu.
And that inevitably slides over into children’s books, where I won’t say anything about Tove Jansson because everybody has done that so nicely. I will mention E. Nesbit, although she balances on the knife edge of Bad Things Not Happening Because Averted. Or else Bad Things residing in the background. Tom’s Midnight Garden. My Side of the Mountain (although not for parents; for parents it’s just one are-you-out-of-your-everloving-mind after another. The Phantom Tollbooth. Shirley Hughes’s Alfie books – really, any of her books.
I am so happy to see all the Moomintroll fans. And how many folks love The Land of Green Ginger.
Pat @74–I was just about to mention Rendezvous with Rama. The worst thing that happens is a meteor strike in the prologue and someone has a little trouble with an unpowered flying machine.
Aonghus @@.-@, in regards Aegypt: Well, one of the main characters is burned at the stake. Oops, spoiler for 400-years-past history. On lower stakes, in the present-day storyline, there is a kidnapping; even though it gets resolved (mostly off-camera), it’s still very tense. And there’s one of the best depictions of heartbreak ever.
WARNING: Ramble ahead!
1. I’d beware of generalizing too much about either cozy mysteries or humor as categories in which No Bad Things Happen.
With respect to humor, several counter-examples have been noted upstream: a good deal of humor involves people being the victims of bad things (Charlie Bucket’s competitors in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), or deliberately embarrassing others in attempts at being funny (a lot of TV sitcoms; see #59 above).
WIth respect to cozy mysteries (or simply “cozies”): this is a category that’s evolved a great deal over time, and what you see being published today as “cozy” is in some ways much more narrowly defined than it would have been forty years ago. To illustrate, some classic and modern cozy authors/series:
# Emma Lathen* (1960s-’90s; John Putnam Thatcher series)
# Elizabeth Peters* (1960s-2000s; Amelia Peabody series, Vicky Bliss series, stand-alones)
# P. M. Carlson (1980s-2000s; Maggie Ryan series, more)
# Lea Wait* (1990s-2019); multiple series, stand-alones)
# Kathy Lynn Emerson* (1990s-present; multiple series)
# Kate Dyer-Seeley* (2014-present; multiple series)
[asterisk indicates publication under multiple bylines]
Of all these, the one writer whose entire canon I’d be confident of recommending as “no bad things happen” is Emma Lathen…but Lathen’s novels look and read very differently from what you’d see marketed as “cozy” on a bookstore shelf or Web site today. The protagonist is male (rare), the prose is in third person (ditto), the recurring cast operates almost entirely separately from the main plots, and there’s virtually no ongoing romantic arc (one secondary character does get married, but he’s the least prominent of the recurring cast). These are mysteries with Christie/Ellery Queen-type puzzle plots and little to no onstage violence, sleuth John Putnam Thatcher is a high-level investment banker, and there’s a fair bit of gentle satire aimed at the world of big business throughout.
All the others are excellent writers, and I’d recommend most of their work for general purposes — but Peters’ “Amelia Peabody” novels include a multi-book Very Bad Thing in mid-series (specifically, a very fraught romantic relationship that goes badly wrong before it’s eventually resolved). Carlson’s very first novel makes a beautifully plotted left turn in a way that goes very much against cozy convention; most of the subsequent series is less fraught, but is set in the ’60s and ’70s with Vietnam aftermath as an ongoing thematic element. Lea Wait’s Maine-centric mysteries are cozy in form but tackle heavy subject matter (she has an ongoing theme involving the adoption of older children, often orphaned). The series of Emerson’s I like best (published under her Kaitlyn Dunnett persona) is also set in Maine; her characterization and plotting are strong, but also push the limits of cozy convention in ways that would trip a No Bad Things meter. Dyer-Seeley comes closest of this cluster to limiting the Bad Thing quotient, but her longest-running series (as Ellie Alexander) nonetheless is realistic enough that at least one book ends up with one or another character temporarily in a hospital bed.
2. There are in fact ways around the “plot requires conflict” issue for certain classes of storytelling.
And it turns out that there’s actually a label that describes one of the chief approaches to this problem. TV Tropes credits Leverage creator John Rogers with coining the phrase “competence porn” — of which that series is a clear example, but I’d argue that the phrase also takes in (among a lot of other things) the Melendy and Moffat stories by Elizabeth Enright and Eleanor Estes, mentioned upstream. “Mary Sue” stories, whether in fanfic or professional binding, can arise from competence porn done badly. And I wonder if The Mouse That Roared, per my prior rec, may not define a counter-form of “incompetence porn”, in which good things happen despite the best efforts of external forces to screw things up.
For genre purposes, a significant subset of fairy tales fall into this category — in these, the conflict comes not from character growth, but from an already-mature character coping with challenges and adversity to win the princess and half the kingdom. The best example of this in modern publishing may be Mercedes Lackey — a very high percentage of her work, especially in the “Elemental Masters” series, can be classified under this umbrella. Also, much of original-series Star Trek is competence porn in its ensemble form (and see a few of the best tie-in novels; Janet Kagan’s Uhura’s Song for one). Now, not all competence porn fits the “No Bad Things Happen” criteria — a few of Lackey’s novels go to some fairly dark places, and while Diane Duane’s “Young Wizards” series is absolutely under the umbrella, it’s also got its share of sacrificial moments. But I rather think the “gentle reads” label cited in #73 above will turn out to have a good deal of competence porn built into it.
Somebody beat me to it, so I have to second the recommendation for the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. The core series is 10 books that take the protagonists from Betsy’s 5th birthday party to when they are all married. Lots of family closeness, lots of interesting events, some minor bad stuff such as one of the girls being quarantined with something like scarlet fever. She survives. Their adventures as kids are pure delight. In the teen years there is some romantic drama, but nothing truly bad. You’ll love the characters and the writing.
All still in print, all marvelous.
@24, at the risk of derailing, I bounced hard off Thursday Next, since the first chapter was a woman clearly suffering from PTSD being interrogated about the brutal murder of her partner. I know everyone says it’s a whimsical romp, but could you tell me how far into the book it starts being whimsical and harmless, so I can start there?
Non-SFF, but the Baldwin Village romance series by Jackie Lau is very low conflict, the lead couples are generally able to talk out misunderstandings and communicate well, and there is positive handling of depression and social anxiety without ‘fixing’ the character. That’s what I’m reading now.
#61 While Shute’s ON THE BEACH is a mega-downer, and his work generally leans toward the positive, some of his non-OTB books also have Very Bad Things happen to characters. A TOWN LIKE ALICE, for one (yeah, *that* part), and especially MOST SECRET (one MC’s wife burns to death in the Blitz, and after that the MC is barely human, essentially a machine whose sole purpose is killing Germans, and killing them in horrible ways; other MCs fare somewhat better).
TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOM, although it begins with an offscreen (iirc) death, is mostly a Quest story where the obstacles to be overcome aren’t physically threatening, just potentially derailing to the important Quest. PIED PIPER, although –like MOST SECRET– set in the midst of WW2, is short on violence and death (again, iirc; it’s been a couple of decades since I did a Shute binge).since one of the MC’s overriding goals is to keep himself and the children he’s shepherding *away* from actual combat.
I’ve described the overall theme of Shute’s work as “Ordinary people, placed in extraordinary circumstances, can become extraordinary people.” So most of his work ends on a positive note. But there are those occasional moments….
In my family, in times of stress, we reread James Herriot’s stories of being a veterinarian in rural England in the 1930s, published in the U.S. as All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful.
Plainsong by Kazushi Hosaka. A man feeds stray cats, makes some friends, and goes to the beach. Very well written and interesting despite the pedestrian subject matter.
@@@@@ bmlg
The Thursday Next books are never harmless; they’re whimsical and high stakes almost throughout. When reading them, I am usually both delighted and petrified, but I love their good heart and literary allusions. They’re fun to read, but not relaxing. Thursday is badly and permanently wounded in one of the last books in a way that makes me sad whenever I think of it.
I once read a hilarious novel about a flock of sheep that investigate a murder, and no, it’s not BELLWETHER. Everything works out very nicely, I might add. Anybody remember it?
Fritz Leiber’s A Pail of Air has something bad that happened in the past.
But the story is entirely about something good happening.
Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs and Elinore Pruitt Stewart’s Letters from a Woman Homesteader. :-)
Children’s Book: The Monster at the End of this Book has a lovely non-spooky ending
Adults: I agree with Connie Willis on To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether, but do not under any circumstances read Doomsday Book hoping for a happy ending. It does what it says on the tin, and it does it in a bleak, and beautiful way.
I also find everything from Becky Chambers to be very soothing although there are many crises along the way.
Any Laurie Colwin, but particularly Happy All the Time.
Sorcery and Cecilia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot bt Patricia Wrede
charming and nothing really bad happens….
excessivelyperky, #86: THREE BAGS FULL, by Leonie Swann, is the murder-solving-sheep book. (If there’s more than one murder-solving-sheep book in the world, I’ll be very surprised.) It’s a lot of fun.
The Harper Hall Trilogy by Anne McCaffrey is pretty harmless, the “bad” things that happen aren’t really all that bad.
Sir Terry Pratchett — I mean, even Death is likable.
I want to second the recommendation for Sorcery & Cecilia or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot. The other two books in the trilogy also should qualify with nothing bad happens.
I’d also suggest Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles. The only book that might not qualify is the third (Searching for Dragons), but it’s skippable. The fourth (Talking to Dragons) was written as a stand alone. The first (Dealing with Dragons) can also be read standalone. If you can get the 25th Anniversary Edition version (the ebook is available as an omnibus), it’s worth getting because Wrede’s introductions to each book are priceless.
Sorcery and Cecilia: or, the Enchanted Chocolate Pot — utterly delightful magical romance in epistolary form! Always my go-to happy book.
Connie Willis’ time traveling historians novel “To Say Nothing of the Dog” is perfect for this thread. Nothing really bad happens, but there’s lots of misadventures and misunderstandings, and it’s delightful.
EDIT: Whoops, looks like folks have already recommended it. Well count me in!
McKinley’s “Beauty” has almost nothing bad happen and, perhaps more importantly, the tone is gentle and reassuring. The father loses his fortune, of course, and the Beast has a period of ill-health, but everything else is interesting rather than scary. I first read it in 10th grade and it was a decade before I realized that the book had no antagonist.
Nathan Lowell’s Trader Series – Quarter Share, Half Share etc… about a youth who has to get off a company planet in a hurray – he ends up on a trading ship where nothing bad happens but he makes friends and becomes part of the crew.
Totally fits this thread.
Good Dog, Carl : A Classic Board Book by Alexandra Day is a wonderful adventure story that children and adults can both enjoy. It also has very few world. Mostly pictures that generate lots of fun.
The Adept Series by Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris has very little high-stakes bad happening to the main characters, and a whole lot of them fighting evil and generally being capital-G “Good”. When bad things happen it’s almost always to characters who you didn’t really meet previously, or to “bad guys” who you’re supposed to not like. They’re quite…silly…books, but they work for me as comfort reads. The biggest bad thing happens in the 5th book, so if you’re really intent on avoiding anything actually bad, just read 1-4.
Any of the few books by Judith Merkle Riley though A Vision Of Light is the place to begin. It’s well-written historical fiction with Medieval contemplative connections. Lots of bad things happen to our heroine , Margaret of Ashbury,but she rises above them all with love and compassion and a close mystical connection to the ‘light’. I’ve read this book so many times I’ve lost count—I reread it when life just seems too much. Better than any self medicating I know! One of my most favorite books ever!
I loved seeing the suggestion of one of my favorite authors, Martha Wells. I think her background in Anthropology deeply enriches her Raksura series and her message of loyalty and community would be comforting in today’s reality.
While I can’t say that nothing bad ever happens, the first two Share books from Nathan Lowell are fairly close. A lot of the negative reviews are along the lines of “nothing ever happens, and then coffee is made.”
If you can get your hands on a copy of Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard by Eleanor Farjeon, it is a gorgeous, amazing book in which the only bad things that happen are very mild, temporary romantic setbacks.
Comfort reading in the not-quite-sff vein: Nancy Atherton’s Aunt Dimity series. It opens when a thirtyish woman’s life is falling apart but brings her a magical helper: Aunt Dimity, her late mother’s equally late best friend, who communicates through a blank diary. Absolutely for those who need everything to turn out all right in the end.
Can we get these collected onto a list that isn’t in the comments, for easier browsing/alphabetization? Is it ok to start that?
I’ve been reading Elizabeth Goudge’s Eliot family trilogy. Terrible things are about to happen or have happened (WWII happens between the first and second book of the trilogy) but nothing awful happens in the books themselves; they’re all about people coming to terms with those things, and with themselves. I think a lot of books of that vintage may be like that, come to think of it; much of DE Stevenson’s writings, and some of the odd quirky other books of the time that have been republished, like Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (MC is threatened with old age in poverty, but the threat is averted) and Miss Carter and the Ifrit (WWII background).
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
The Phantom Tollbooth
I can quite understand the impulse, though frequently I cope with the same feelings by escaping to the other extreme of horror and ghost stories.
I recently rewatched Studio Ghibli’s ‘Whisper of the Heart’ and want to endorse that as a nothing-bad-happens movie. The worst things that happen are a boy is slightly rude and teases the protagonist early on; and the protagonist’s big sister is mad at her and scolds her, but only because she sincerely loves her and is worried about her future. Hardly anybody writes genuinely loving and respectful families as well as Miyazaki.
Certain kinds of coming of age stories, where the narrative is the character starting to find their way in the world and what they want to do with their life, don’t necessarily have anything bad happen. (This includes both ‘Whisper of the Heart’ and ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’.) This is faintly ringing a bell for some SFFnal books but I can’t quite think what ones.
Another possible safe genre is old travelogues?
I was recently thinking of the book ‘Between the Woods and the Water’, one book of a journal of a young British man’s journey on foot across Europe in 1933-1934. It’s quite lovely. (From our later vantage, though, foreknowledge casts a dark shadow across all of it.)
Dichroic @108: Your mention of Elizabeth Goudge reminds me of her book ‘The Dean’s Watch’. It’s been a terribly long time since I read it, but it might qualify – it’s primarily about the developing spiritual fellowship and friendship between two very shy and isolated men.
As a retired (Emeritus) professor of English, philosophy, and (surprise) science fiction (the most philosophical literature out there these days), I really have to say the author didn’t quite understand More’s Utopia if you honestly think it has a happy ending. It is a very biting satire, of course, and uses impossibility to puncture the pretensions of an evil world while recognizing its own absurdity.
Only completely stress-free entry I could think of is Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwards. It’s also fun to see how many things he had right!
I can’t believe there isn’t more Dianna Wynne Jones on this list. Some of her books are a little dark, but most of them are so lively and fun. The Chrestomanci series is a delight. My particular favorite is the last one, The Pinhoe Egg, which can be read as a standalone. Someone mentioned Sharon Shinn’s “Safe-Keepers” series. I think the trauma in The Dream Makers Magic would be too much for many people and seriously triggering. However, The Truth Tellers Tale has long been a comfort read. A couple of bad things happen to other people and there is a missing person, but all the main characters get together in the end and its very satisfying. Terry Pratchett is always comforting and satisfying. I think his Tiffany Aching series especially so. There is something about his pacing that keeps you interested, but diffuses the tension, so that even when bad/scary things are happening, his humor shines through.
Although bad things do happen in Connie Willis’ time travel/WW2 novels (Blackout and All Clear) they are filled with HOPE which we all need during this challenging time. They helped me through a dark time in the recent past and I hope they can help others now.
@8, I have to strongly disagree with The Prince and the Dressmaker, a book where (spoilers!) the main character is kidnapped and forcibly outed. Just want to warn people because the book is otherwise very light in tone, and that bit caught me by surprise!
At Amberleaf Fair was my go to. Also, the graphic novel Castle Waiting, though a couple of times, bad things almost happen.
An edge case is Cardcaptor Sakura, where sad things have happened in the past, and bad things always might happen, but don’t. The closest involves a low(ish) stakes mistake that can’t be undone — but that can be mended.
The movie Hopscotch is one of my comfort films, though it has aged badly in a couple of respects (I’m not thinking about the technology, but of the homophobia).
From a children’s book perspective, the only bad thing that happens (IMHO) in Where the Wild Things are is that Max and his mom have a fight (they make up in the end) and Max gets homesick. Also, by Maurice Sendak, In the Night Kitchen, Mickey has a fantastic dream of cavorting through a magical kitchen where three wonderful chefs who all look just like Oliver Hardy from Laurel and Hardy run about in wild abandon, baking their hearts out. When Mickey finally wakes, he is rested and happy.
As far as more “grown-up” books are concerned, has anyone considered the Discworld books by Sir Terry Pratchett? Sure there are challenges and bad things happen that need to be overcome, but has anyone ever read Pratchett and not come away from it feeling delighted? That’s my idea of comfort reading. Just a thought.
@115 I love Chrestomanci, but all sorts of bad things happen in that series: there’s attempted murder in Charmed Life, a horrific feud between two families in The Magicians of Caprona, and Witch Week has witch hunts at a school for children whose parents were burned as witches.
Tiffany Aching is another series with some truly horrific events. I think it’s in I Shall Wear Midnight where a man beats his pregnant daughter until she miscarries and then Tiffany has to save his sorry ass from being killed by an angry mob.
It’s odd that so many of the books I find light and comforting entertainment have horrible things happening in them. I’m rereading Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s, a series which brings me immeasurable delight, and I was struck by how many tragedies actually occur per book.
I always found the stakes less taut and the villains less competent and the world view overall positive in Teresa Edgerton’s books. At this point, I can’t remember if that quite equates to “no bad things happen” but I am feeling an urge to go reread Goblin Moon and the sequels.
Another Wodehouse recommendation – the stories do have conflict and obstacles, but it’s all screwball comedy so the stakes are almost always happiness in a greater or lesser amount. There is some infrequent (social) humiliation and the stories are inextricable from their class-system backdrop, but lovely popcorn-style reads.
I definitely second Spindle’s End. It’s one of my favourite books. Her other books (except Deerskin) are also in that genre.
I must admit that I’m not a huge fan of books where nothing bad ever happens (even Winnie the Pooh gets into scrapes now and then). I prefer books where bad stuff happens and people work together to overcome it. I’m inordinately crazy about Tamora Pierce and Diana Gabaldon.
1066 and All That: the funniest book in the history of the world. (Sellar & Yeatman, failed MS Oxon) iirc. I’ve loved it for 60 yrs and i still can’t keep from laughing when i open it up.
“With the ascension of Charles I to the throne we come at last to the Central Period of English History (not to be confused with the Middle Ages, of course), consisting in the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive).”
“How would you deal with a venomous Bead? be quick.”
“Robin Hood was a miraculous shot with the longbow and it is said that he could split a hare at 400 paces and a Sheriff at 800. He therefore spent his time blowing a horn and shooting at the Sheriff of Nottingham (who was an outwit). He always used to sound his horn first, particularly when shooting round a corner; this showed his sportsmanship and also enabled him to shoot the Sheriff running, which was more difficult.”
When I was going through a difficult time, I read most of the Liaden Universe books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Similar in tone to the Vorksogian universe, I found them to be a hopeful and soothing diversion from my troubles. I can’t promise that nothing bad at all happens to the characters, but they are full of love and loyalty and an unbreakable code of honor.
I second all recommendations for Zenna Henderson. I don’t remember them all well enough to know if something bad happens, but they are where I would turn first for warm, feel-good reading if I weren’t concerned that my copies would wear out. Have her books been republished? A quick look doesn’t find them as ebooks.
I think it was the late Laurie Colwin who wrote a book that was wonderful, not sappy, but nothing bad or nasty happened. She died quite young, but also wrote a few other novels. I can’t vouch for any of them.
My favorite feelgood books are Zenna Henderson’s The People series: No Different Flesh, Pilgrimage or Ingathering (the collected books). Yes, something Bad happened when an alien people’s planet self-destructs, forcing them to flee to earth but that’s mostly offstage. The books are mostly about how a group of people with psychic gifts who have no Original Sin in them manage to survive on this planet. I mean it, the People are genuinely good and their planet had done away with war long since. Now they have to deal with violence and humans and they do, with a lot of compassion. I find them comforting and hopeful.
@hoopmanjh re: The Night Circus – yes, there’s a couple of deaths, and the end result for the main characters is a bit stressful.
Green Eggs and Ham?
The book that first pops into my mind where nothing bad happens is Richard Bach’s Curious Lives (Adventures from the Ferret Chronicles). This gentle exploration of a society based on wisdom and — curiosity –is charming and mind bending.
Or a bit more seriously… The Encyclopedia Brown books by Donald J. Sobol. :)
Elizabeth Enright’s *The Saturdays* and *The Four Storey Mistake* are great “comfort reads.” along with Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy, Tacy and Tib books. I read these at about age eleven and remember then fondly.
Lovelace’s books are about girls living at the turn of the 20th century.
In SF, Willis can’t be beat. *Passages* has great comedy aspects as does *Crosstalk.*
@133,
Passages is definitely not ‘no bad things happen!’
There’s a graphic novel called The Wizard’s Tale by Kurt Busiek and David T. Wenzel about the last in a line of evil wizards… who happens to be a complete failure at the whole “evil” thing. It’s very gentle, funny, and uplifting, and very little in the way of bad stuff happens. (There are imprisonments, and we get the strong impression that terrible things happened under the reign of the evil wizards, but 99% of that is firmly offstage.)
Great list. I’ll add a few thoughts from books old and new.
a. Humour for sure. Definitely the P.G. Wodehouse series in which Jeeves always saves Bertie from at worst marriage or being disinherited. But take your pick in this genre.
b. Thinly fictionalized autobiographies. E.g. George MacDonald Fraser’s McAuslan series. Thievery is narrowly averted, a smallpox scare turns out to be not smallpox, and some moonshine brewers outwit the constabulary.
c. Sci-Fi/Mystery. E.g., someone already mentioned Isaac Asimov. His Black Widower Series is a series of short story mysteries that revolve around small mysteries – no-one is murdered or harmed.
d. Fantasy. E.g. Staadecker’s Illyrian Voyages series. Things threatened rarely materialize. E.g. One of the characters is sentenced to death by a thousand cuts. Transcription error in pigeon post reads death by a thousand cats. Prisoner escapes in ensuing confusion (along with a thousand cats).
e. Travel/Adventure Travel. Eric Newby’s Love and War in the Apennines. Obviously the writer survives unharmed. Plus one feisty bride. Or Newby’s Last Great Grain Race. Or Peter Goss “Against the Wind”, horrifying round the world sailing race in which (at least) the principal characters survive all odds.
The Cat who went to Heaven :Elizabeth Coatsworth; a bit melancholy but lovely.
Mr Popper’s Penguins: Richard and Florence Atwater,
Catwings Ursula K. Le Guin,
————
Diane Duane’s Wizardry series
A Wrinkle in Time
“All the Places to Love”
“Painting the Wind”
Both written by Patricia MacLachlin (author of “Sarah, Plain and Tall”)
Some literary fiction can have a feel good ending and conflict that is specific to the main character rather than something to make the reader anxious for the state of the world.
One of my favourites is Jack Dawkins by Charlton Daines. It’s the story of the Artful Dodger come back to England as an adult and his struggles between his criminal past and an opportunity to better himself. Really well written and entertaining.
Connie Willis has a lot of stories that fall into this category, as does Sir Terry Pratchett. To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Willis and Going Postal by Pratchett spring to mind.
The Hero and the Crown is just one of Robin McKinley’s books that fit this bill, but it’s my favorite.
Also the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne – lots of danger but no death or disaster, at least not in the first 7 books.
Apologies to the commenters, but I have to strongly disagree with Duane’s Wizardry books (Just as an example, she left me sobbing over a car. I am not a car person.), L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (kidnapping, mental torture, a few near-deaths), and McCaffrey’s Harper Hall books (more near-deaths, rampant bullying that sometimes turns physical, and a character who gets injured and is given poor medical treatment, probably on purpose).
Something that might qualify, though I read these a very long time ago and could be wrong, is Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan: A human body is discovered on the moon. It’s wearing a spacesuit that no one recognizes and has equipment labeled in a language no one recognizes, and it’s I-forget-how-many thousands of years old. The book follows the people (in a now-dated near future) trying to figure out how “Charlie” came to be there at that time. If anything truly bad happens, except to Charlie, I’ve forgotten it. Similar for the first sequel, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede–there might be bad stuff but I don’t remember any. But while I enjoyed the third book, Giants’ Star, it most definitely doesn’t qualify for this list. I’ve just learned that there are more sequels, but I don’t know anything about them.
Aunt Dimity mysteries. There are no murders, just a problem to solve. (OK, not Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil) The problem is often solved by understanding one another and the protagonist usually finds out that she raced ahead and exaggerated the problem.
MCKarle: If you’d like to make an alphabetical list and email it to me bluejo@gmail.com I could annotate it and make a new post, I think there’s enough interest! I’d probably put the whole list at the end and do a post discussing the suggestions and talking more about these things. I’ve been thinking this would be a good idea but been intimidated by the thought of the time/effort it would take to make the list.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things (Patrick Rothfuss)?
@25, I am enthusiastically seconding your recommendation of M.C.A. Hogarth’s Dreamhealers series. Best of all, _Mindtouch_, the first book, is free in e-book.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s “Season of Ponies” is a lovely, magical, gentle children’s read, with a not-terribly-scary successful confrontation with a witch.
I really loved Daniel Pinkwater’s “The Snarkout Boys” books — they’re adventurous without ever feeling dangerous, and my daughter and I still want to go to the baked potato vendor described within!
Joan Aiken’s “Arabel’s Raven” and the rest of the Arabel and Mortimer series are sweet, funny, charming (make sure to get the editions with Quentin Blake illustrations, which enrich the text immeasurably), and — while written for children — are a perennial favorite in my household since my own childhood.
It’s been a long time since I read the series, but I think the Anne of Green Gable books by Lucy Maud Montgomery qualify. Eventually, in one of the books, Anne’s foster father dies quickly and peacefully in his old age, but other than that, I don’t remember any hugely bad things happening to anybody. The series is mostly a slice-of-life about a girl growing up, becoming an adult teacher, then marrying and having a family — set on Prince Edward Island, Canada from about the 1880s to WW1 at the end (the novel about her teenaged daughter, RIlla). Her other non-Anne books and short stories are also quite good — A Tangled Web, The Blue Castle, and so forth.
The Mitford series, by Jan Karon. These helped me through a disaster a few years back. All goodness here.
Has anyone mentioned E. Nesbit? I cannot say how many times I have reread these over the years.
I am an avid reader but when I was first diagnosed with ME in 2018, I really struggled to read any book which had large amounts of tension or unhappiness. I found a decent amount of romance books fell into this category but I feel I’d be lowering the tone of the conversation to mention them. However, I find a few sci-fi/fantasy books that fit the bill.
1. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. An interesting look at the relationships formed between different alien species interacting with each other within the cramped conditions of a spaceship (if I remember rightly).
2. The Safe-Keepers Secret by Sharon Shinn. A very gentle story about children who grow up under the weight of a secret, and what happens when that secret comes out.
3. Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt. A young, brave girl must find her true love before time runs out on her bargain with Lord Death.
4. Quicker by Laurence E Dahners. Ell Donsaii is the smartest, fastest human alive. Just sit back and let your mind spin into endless future possibilities with no fear that Ell will ever fail.
As someone who is a voracious reader but has also been disabled with PTSD for 25 years, I have created lists on Goodreads which address these issues–some are SA-free, some I called “G-rated” (by which I meant no bad things happen). My lists can be found at https://www.goodreads.com/list/created/52019675-sheryl-hill
I truly hope y’all will add some great ones!
I also draw your attention to the Transformed-Character lists. I can’t say that nothing bad happens, but these are books in which people face adversity (not horror or trauma–but check the reviews in case) and experience growth which transforms them in their very being.
God bless you all!
P.S. If you are the kind of reader who finds sustenance in the Mitford series or Anne of Green Gables, I encourage you to read those rather than the books I suggest. The problem with all discussions such as this is that our interactions with books are highly personal.
If you like the books on my list and feel you can handle a bit more tension, you may check out my favorites.
Also, I forgot to mention that the library maintained by books recorded for the blind (BARD) often includes specific details about what to expect in terms of violence and sex. Perhaps libraries could make those descriptions available to the general public.
I have added a list to Goodreads “Covid19-Escape Fiction for Adults.”
Again, if your escape diet includes Anne of Green Gables or the Mitford series, this is not the list for you, but it is meant to be as trauma-free/suspense-free as possible.
Contributions and votes much appreciated.
Children’s books – I think the Phantom Tollbooth counts. For very small children, the Happy Lion stories. Some of the Just-So stories? Anatole the mouse? A Cricket in Times Square? For adult works, perhaps he’s like to read some light plays of Oscar Wilde – after all, it was Wilde who said, ‘”The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
The Witch books by Debora Geary are what I think of as “suburban fantasy”: they’re all about people eating cookies, knitting, coming to self-discoveries and finally being able to tell other people that they love them, and nothing bad ever happens. Though with the amount of sugar they eat, it ought to.
Sadly, a bad thing happened in the author’s real life (her marriage broke up) and she doesn’t write them anymore. But there are at least 13 novels in three related series, and if you like one, you’ll like them all. Well copy edited, too.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia (The Beautiful Ones, Gods of Jade and Shadow) is a skilled exponent of what I call the Glorious Ending, where what seems like it’s going to be inevitable tragedy is averted by someone being selfless and loving. Things can get very tense on the way through, though, so maybe those don’t count.
C. Dale Brittain’s Daimbert books have appealing characters, low stakes, and a pleasant setting, and can be quite amusing.
If you don’t count largely passive main characters and arrogant, annoying love interests as bad things (and in some moods I do), Kate Stradling writes some nice stories in which (other) bad things can be relied on not to happen.
Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Sourdough) writes stories where there is a puzzle, even maybe some conflict, but nothing bad happens. Someday, I believe, he will write a perfect book; neither of those two are it, but they’re creditable attempts.
Dorothy Gilman is mostly remembered for her Mrs. Pollifax series, but her standalone Thale’s Folly is a lovely comfort read about a disparate group of people finding and making a home together.
A Nun in the Closet, also by Gilman, is a charming cosy mystery with an order of cloistered nuns (some naive, some pretty shrewd) inheriting a mysterious property. Like Thale’s Folly, a diverse group of quirky characters find acceptance and welcome.
I must disagree with @27’s characterization of The Dragon With a Chocolate Heart as problem-free. It’s clear that things will eventually turn out all right, but the first chapters have attempted murder, loss of family, abandonment and body horror. The emotions are real and they aren’t cheerful. I think it’s worse for an adult reader because in general child readers are happy to have families wiped off the board so the characters can have adventures without supervision, but parents aren’t as chavalier about it.
In general we seem to be amassing two lists — books where you feel good at the end (and for most of the ride) and books where nothing bad happens. The latter are a subset of the former, but they aren’t equivalent! Even in Romance books, where you are guaranteed a happy ending, some have a bumpier ride. Bad stuff happens in a lot of Nora Roberts, but if I want a peaceful read I go to her Bride Quartet. And I don’t remember them well enough to put them on the No Bad Things Happen list.
I will second (third?) all Gail Carriger books. Much like Jane Austen books, there are lots of crazy (usually really funny) things happening, but very little “bad”.
What a list! I don’t see The Penderwicks (the entire series of 5 books) by Jeanne Birdsall. And I’m going to suggest Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for a New Day, because the bad things have already happened (and one of them is a pandemic eerily similar to the current one).
I have to agree that Diana Wynne Jones books are not often for this list, but I remember few actually bad things in A Tale of Time City (main character is evacuated from London at start of WW2, one character is briefly injured then healed, various refugees are rescued).
The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye is IIRC lovely throughout other than the heroine running away from home to avoid her parents trying to hire a dragon so a foreign prince will defeat it and marry her.
Second to Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin! The first time I read it I couldn’t relax because I kept expecting something to go horribly wrong, and it never did.
Meet the Austins by Madeleine L’Engle.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith: not exactly a happy ending, but nothing really bad happens either.
A lot depends on what gets you in books, though. I’m more sensitive to tension and anxiety than actual tragedy, so even in kid’s books, the “oh no they’re going to get In Trouble!” feeling is intense.
@@@@@Laura Smith-Petersen
Not to be overly critical, but in The N°1 Ladies’ Detective agency there is RITUAL SACRIFICE OF CHILDREN.
It may happen off screen, and the protagonist technically gives closure to the people looking for said child, true, but all the same, just the fact that such practices exist in the world isn’t a very comforting thought.
I don’t know why this one didn’t occur to me before, but a definite candidate: Meanwhile, Back at the Castle by Hope Campbell. This one was published before kids’ books were divided into “middle grade” and “YA”, and falls squarely on the border between the two age groups. The premise is somewhat similar to Wibberley’s The Mouse that Roared, save that in this case the micro-country is Great Mosquito Island, located in the St. Lawrence River, which turns out to belong neither to the US nor to Canada, but to the last descendant of a tiny Native American tribe who sells it to the father of our heroine, teen-aged Suzanne, who is not (usually) the countercultural rebel her dad wishes she were. [This was published back in 1970, when hippies were hippies and Technicolor VW buses were a status symbol.] Entertaining complications ensue, and the results are both amiable and politically clever.
Bill Richardson, a Canadian author, won Canada’s Stephen Leacock Award for Humor in 1994 for his book Bachelor Brother’s Bed & Breakfast. The sequel if Bachelor Brother’s Bed & Breakfast Pillow talk, Fiction; hard to describe as it is not a novel. Numerous short “chapters” with first-person “stories.” It includes “Brief Lives,” each one with a guest as the speaker; it also includes lists of books. The only sad part is that the B&B is entirely fictional.
I’m coming to this late but if anyone really wants light-hearted romances, one of the better writers of that subgenre is Barbara Metzger and my favorite book of hers is Miss Lockhart’s Letters. In it a young woman overhears that she will soon die and sends off a pile of very melodramatic letters to everyone who had ever wronged her, only to find out the conversation she overheard wasn’t about her at all. Nothing bad happens except a bunch of people have to be a bit more honest than usual.
A month late to the party, but there’s a LOT of manga in the “absolutely nothing bad happens” genre (sometimes called “iyashikei” or “healing” manga).
I really enjoyed the anime version of The Flying Witch, in which a young witch goes to live with her muggle cousins in a small town while she completes her witch training. Slice of life, with occasional broomsticks and screaming mandrakes.
In The Walking Man, a man goes for walks. That’s it. That’s the manga. He has nice walks looking at the scenery and running errands on the way home from work.
Yotsuba& is a cheerful slice of life comedy about a little girl being raised by a single dad and getting up to gentle wacky hijinks.
@99
I love Lowell’s “Share” or “Trader” series, but by the fourth book there are some significant bad things happening: Bullying, sexual harassment, rape, and probably murder, though that is off-screen. In the fifth and sixth books a marriage breaks up, and a very major character is untimly murdered. Still there is less violence than in most SF, and most things come out OK in the end.
-DES
“Slowly, slowly, slowly, said the sloth”, by Eric Carle: nothing bad happens (in fact, practically nothing happens), yet I and my assorted nephews, nieces & grandkids never seem to tire of it…
Celia Lake has a set of interconnected series set in an alternate magical version of Britain called Albion. Time span extends from perhaps the late 19th century to the early 1920s. The first world war is very much a presence in the background of some of these stories, but the story-telling doesn’t exploit the horrors of war as much as it captures the sorrows of its aftermath. Plots usually involve mysterious happenings without a lot of violence or conflict and are centered on slowly developed romances. The details of the magical system(s) tend to be blurry, and the main focus is on character and relationships. I’ve found Lake’s stories to be both soothing and satisfying with reliable HEAs.
Also, if you enjoy a nostalgic read, Daddy-Long-Legs is an excellent epistolary novel. Something about the letter format just seems to declaw potentially painful events–possibly because in the time between a letter being written and received the old-fashioned way, events will have most likely sorted themselves out.
v
After this post was reposted for December 29, 2022, I came back here to see if I commented on the original one. I did not, and so I will now:
I *love* the Arthur Ransome books. Maybe partly because I grew up with my four siblings spending our summers canoeing on a lake with family friends, so even though I didn’t sail, just the camaraderie “messing around with boats” and finding or inventing group adventure was enough to trigger some deep nostalgia.
As an adult, I wish someone would do the research necessary to associate the code Ransome used in his books with his intelligence on Britain to the Germans.
I don’t altogether agree that Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series belongs here. One of the books did have a tragic ending, and in several others, a sympathetic character has to die to bring about the happy ending. Some do qualify, though, notably the novelette “How Lovely Are Thy Branches.”
Sheridan Le Fanu is probably best known for his vampire story Carmilla which obviously has a bad thing or two in it, but he also wrote Uncle Silas in which the worst thing that happens is a young woman standing up and very quietly walking out of a room. On the other hand, a very bad thing does come very close to happening, and Le Fanu spends most of the book gradually and masterfully ratchetting the suspense up to that point, so it probably doesn’t count as a comfort read.
On the comedy side I like Walter Jon Williams’ Maijstral books. True, people keep challenging him to duels, but he usually manages to wriggle out of them and anyway, you can’t go around burgling people, however legally, without someone taking offense.
Seeing the again, I wonder if The Mad Scientist’s Club qualifies… YA, and quite old, but delightful
I couldn’t remember whether Daniel Pinkwater’s “The Snarkout Boys” books had been mentioned, but I was happy to see them here. I may need to track them down and do a reread.
@2 I found Night Circus to be a traumatizing read. The torture and lack of agency inflicted on the female protagonist in order to develop her power would disqualify this book as a ‘nothing bad happens’ comfort read.
Maybe somebody else already said it, but at the “At Amberleaf Fair” description is also stated : “Torin’s brother falls suddenly and mysteriously ill, and hovers at the brink of death.” That does not count as something bad ?
David Eddings’ Belgariad is a comfort read for me, since of course, no major character dies. Also The Rook and Stiletto (Daniel O’Malley) are a lot of fun! What supernatural power would I like to have? This is a delightful question to ponder when trying to find sleep. All the books by Addison (The Goblin Emperor, Witness for the Dead, Grief of Stones) are delightful, although bad things happen, she is just so gentle with her characters, and they have such lovely support systems by the end, and maybe everything doesn’t end up completely ok, but I still have such hope for a better world.
Everything by LE Modesitt, Jr is on my happy list, but mostly because I’ve read and reread them so many times that I already know where things get dicey, and maybe I want to just skip a chapter or 2?
I want to say that Lord of the Rings is a comfort read for me, although so many bad things happen. I mean, it is a war, afterall. But the prose and poetry of Tolkien is so beautiful, the elven language so delightful, that I can enjoy so much of it in spite of the bad things. I have read it every couple years since I first discovered it at 14. So…. over a dozen re-reads?
I guess for me, part of the comfort is in knowing the outcome.