There are times when it’s very hard to stop doomscrolling and yet there’s nothing to actively do but bite your fingernails. That’s the time for the books that will take you out of this world, and into another that will have problems of its own that will be so absorbing that you can forget, for a little while, the problems that surround you. People have sometimes emailed me saying that they read one of my novels at the deathbed of a relative, and thanking me, and I have over time developed a response to this which is “I’m very sorry you needed it, and I’m very glad it was there for you when you did.”
This is a list of things I’ve found that work for me when that’s what I need. It’s related to comfort reading and books where no bad things happen, but subtly different, and the quality these books really need is to be very grabby, so you really want to read the next line, and the next, and so on. There are a lot of books (some of which I absolutely love) that take some effort to get into, so if you were halfway through them already, they’d be perfect, but these are ones that grab you from the word go. I’m trying to think of things across a range of genres so you haven’t read them all already. They’re in no sort of order. And needless to say, this is far from a complete list, please add things in comments…
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City — K.J. Parker (2019) This was the book that broke my reading slump during lockdown. I was reading, but I had to keep forcing myself to concentrate. This just did the thing where I wasn’t thinking about myself and this world but the problem of finding a sixteenth way to defend a walled city. This is a fantasy novel without magic, written in first person confidential, where the reader is being confided in, in an imaginary history with very fun logistics and military technology. It may not be for everyone, but nothing is for everyone. It was just what I needed.
Under Italian Skies — Nicky Pellegrino (2017) This is a romance novel set in Italy, and it’s very well written and the romance is almost off the page; it’s about a woman going to Italy and everything being OK. There are other books in this category, like Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April and indeed other books by Pellegrino, but if you’re just going to read one, try this one.
Wild Seed — Octavia Butler (1980) This is one where the problems the characters have will help you forget your own. Absolutely unputdownable book about an Igbo shapechanger and an Egyptian man who can jump between bodies, and their relationship over a whole lot of time.
Fangirl — Rainbow Rowell (2013) YA novel about a fanfiction writer going to college and growing up. It’s brilliantly written and very grabby, like all Rowell, and in this one she does wonderful things with giving us bits of the texts and the fanfiction to illuminate the story. You may also like her other books, which are also great.
The Warrior’s Apprentice — Lois McMaster Bujold (1986) The first of the Miles Vorkosigan books, and while they get better, this one is a great place to start. We’re on the planet of Barrayar, in the future, and young Miles wants to go to military academy, but this isn’t that sort of book. So absorbing that I once read this in the bath until the water went unpleasantly cold.
The Husbands — Holly Gramazio (2024) I just read this, and I really just wanted to keep reading it straight through without pausing and was sorry when I finished it. Lauren comes home from a party to discover her husband waiting – but she’s unmarried and she’s never seen him before. And when he goes up to the attic he vanishes and a different husband comes down, and whenever she wants to get rid of a husband and change her life, she can just send him up to the attic… Well-thought-through science fiction premise used for a small-scale story.
Double Star — Robert A. Heinlein (1956) A washed-up actor gets a job standing in for a politician, shenanigans ensue on Mars, in space, and on the Moon. Written in the first-person perspective of a slightly vain actor who is unreliable in that he doesn’t entirely see how much he is being entirely taken over. In my opinion, this is Heinlein’s best novel.
Black Swan Green — David Mitchell (2006) You don’t need to have read anything else in Mitchell’s Thousand Autumns series to read this; it is embedded in it but stands alone. It’s the first-person story of a teenage boy with a stutter in England in the 1980s and his parents are breaking up and he lives in a village and everything is agony, especially getting words to come out of his mouth.
Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) There are things wrong with the science of this book, but the voice is perfect. Ishiguro uses the mode of privilege to talk about dystopia in a very clever way, and it’s really worth reading.
Thus Was Adonis Murdered — Sarah Caudwell (1981) Charming epistolary murder mystery, very readable.
Piranesi — Susanna Clarke (2019) Beautifully written and very gripping story of a man living in a giant house full of statues and tides. It’s so hard to describe what makes it so great, but it’s the first-person point of view of a wonderful but very strange person who is childlike but not childish, living in a world that is magical in ways in which we do not usually read magic.
Rimrunners — C.J. Cherryh (1989) The Locus review said “never a dull moment and rarely a safe one.” Lots of terrible things happen in this book—it’s the opposite of a comfort read, but it’s Cherryh at her most grabby and your own problems may disappear into a small speck in the distance compared to what’s happening to the characters.
Derring-Do For Beginners — Victoria Goddard (2023) Totally the opposite, a real feel-good fantasy about friendship and travel across fantasy worlds.
