Happy book please

I read the Lilian Beckwith books decades ago. I had forgotten about them. I think I will re-read them if they're still in print.

I agree that anything by P G Wodehouse is joyful, particularly the Jeeves and Wooster books because of Bertie Wooster's inimitable narrative voice. The Mr Mulliner stories are little gems too.

I also recommend Nina Stibbe's books. Her first one, "Love, Nina" is her best. Also "Vinegar Girl" by Anne Tyler. All of her novels are brilliant but "Vinegar Girl", her modern re-telling of "The Taming Of The Shrew", is the most light-hearted.

Any of the Sally Page books - The Book of Beginnings, The Keeper of Stories and The Secrets of Flowers. Gentle, heartwarming stories.

Three men in a boat and Cold Comfort Farm

How about "Away with the penguins" by Hazel Prior? Warm and funny.
Quote from the Amazon blurb - "Veronica doesn't have family or friends nearby. Not that she knows about, anyway . . . And she has no idea where she's going to leave her considerable wealth when she dies.

But today . . . today Veronica is going to make a decision that will change all of this."

I second anything by PG Wodehouse or EF Benson (notably the Mapp and Lucia series) and would add The Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope. Happy reading!

Dornford Yates: Berry and Co. or Blind Corner.

Just listening to that right this minute being read in its entirety on BBC Sounds. I love them all (except Northanger Abbey, which I find irritating) and Emma was long my favourite. But as I’ve aged, I feel Persuasion (her last full length novel) has a greater depth to it.

Driving over Lemons by Chris Stewart - true story of family move to Spain and buying a farm house and making a new life there. Cheerful and happy read.
And why not go back to Jane Austen? Just celebrating her 250th birthday and any of her novels would do - all good to reread if you have already read them. My favourite is Persuasion - but take your pick from them all!

Here Come the GIRLS, that should say

A friend gave me Here Come the Gitls by Millie Johnson and I loved it. It’s laugh out loud funny in places and you really get to like the characters.

Anything by Bill Bryson. Especially Letters From A big Island. Absolutely laugh out loud funny as well as being instructive.
Very much older, but The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald plus the follow on books. All autobiographical and set in the 1930s/40s but very funny.

Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k-Up - Alexandra Potter (funny and heart warming)
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
(funny and interesting)
The Reading List - Sara Nisha Adams
(warm and up-lifting)

lixy

Quirky humour from Howard of Warwick who has written a series of books about Brother Hermitage, a hapless naive monk who gets caught up in all sorts of pickles and becomes the King’s investigator.
As with all series some are better than others. I liked the early ones enough to keep up to date with the series.

I was just going to suggest Howard of Warwick, these are brilliantly funny.

Millie Johnson writes quality romance books with a dash of humour and insight into the ups and downs and reality of life. Well worth a read

The Echo Chamber by John Boyne
A satire on social media. Very well written and really funny.

Still Life by Sarah Winman. Slightly different but a lovely read. We all enjoyed reading it. Also A Gentleman in Moscow. A slow start but well worth reading. It was on television too although they altered the story slightly.

Quirky humour from Howard of Warwick who has written a series of books about Brother Hermitage, a hapless naive monk who gets caught up in all sorts of pickles and becomes the King’s investigator.
As with all series some are better than others. I liked the early ones enough to keep up to date with the series.

Yes, it was, Oreo.
Both good. I think the tennis one was on radio 4 years ago.

👍🏻

Oreo

Greyduster

I too thought both The Moon’s a Balloon” and its companion “Bring on the Empty Horses” very entertaining and very funny.

Me too, tho they may be out of print now?

Both still in print and available.

Tony Hawk’s Round Ireland With A Fridge is funny as mentioned and was it the same author that wrote Beating The Moldovan's At Tennis?

Greyduster

I too thought both The Moon’s a Balloon” and its companion “Bring on the Empty Horses” very entertaining and very funny.

Me too, tho they may be out of print now?

Sadgrandma

A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman. It was also a lovely film, renamed A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks.

Yes, this book too, the book better than the film as is usually the case.

NotSpaghetti

These are ultimately happy novels:

Miss Benson's Beetle
by Rachel Joyce
about a spinster schoolteacher, Margery Benson, who abandons her life in 1950s London to search for a mythical golden beetle in New Caledonia^

Rachel Joyce also wrote
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
...which is also quirky and funny.
about Harold who goes on a long journey

...neither of these is relentlessly humorous but both are ultimately "smiling' sort of books - but also with very funny parts.

I recommend these two books as well, in particular the Beetle one, it’s a really good and uplifting read.

A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman. It was also a lovely film, renamed A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks.