So I want to read. Nice, escapist books. Well-written, fun books where I can walk away feeling I've learned something Deep but in a few bite-sized morsels. The present-day equivalent of Tammy Tell Me True, or the Little House books (where grief is summarized in a few terse sentences except when Jack, the dog, dies.) Or the entire cannon of Anne of Green Gables books, where Matthew and Marilla's deaths are the worst things that happen for fifteen or so volumes until one of Anne and Gilbert's sons is killed in WWI.
As you can see, I'm gravitating children's books, which I tend to do when wounded. The last time this happened, I dove into the entire canon of Dianna Wynn Jones, and the time before that, managed not only Anne of Green Gables, but Emily of New Moon, the Rainbow Valley series and discovered Betsy Tacy and Tibb. Plus, I threw in Jane Langton's Diamond in the Window books (that begin in the 1920's but inexplicably become the 1970's and 80's thanks to her publsher's thinking that modern kids couldn't relate to pre-depression era kids, as Ms. Langton confirmed when I write to ask her--what the heck?) And then I found the Mrs. Pollifax mysteries and gulped them down whole.
I suppose I can always reread all of those. But I'd love something new and fresh. I just finished Ava Finch's Fishing With Rayanne (and am wishing it were a series, or that a subsequent novel focused on sister-in-law, Ingrid.) Help me out here, guys. I'll take one-offs but would prefer a series of Black church lady books, or clever children defeating evil polluters novels like Jane Louise Curry. Nothing dark or dystopian, and nothing perfectly sunny. (A slight vitamin D deficiency, yes, but no permanent rickets.)
It doesn't have to be a series if the author writes others in a similar vein. Help! Now! thank you.
