Five Comfort Books to Get You Through Blue Monday
Books to the rescue, as always!
The third Monday of January has been known for some time a Blue Monday in the UK — the most depressing day of the year. It’s particularly rough there, with dark, sunless days and early sunsets and no impending time off work, but it can be a rough patch for everyone. The Independent puts it like this: “The theory goes that this is the time of year when we’re all cold, broke and riddled with guilt that our new year’s resolutions to get fit, drink less alcohol, and be a better human being have fallen by the wayside.”
But, as is so often the case, books can come to the rescue! Huddle on the sofa with one of these comfort books and you’ll feel better.
The Idea of You, by Robinne Lee
I read this book in the depths of winter last year, and it was just what I needed — a hot, engrossing love story between a mum who takes her teenage daughter to a pop concert and the member of the boyband she meets and starts a steamy affair with. The writing is smart and gorgeous, and it’s rocketed to the top of my list of all-time favourites. Chances are you’ll be gripped, and all the things marring your January will recede into the back of your mind while you’re consumed by something else entirely.
Love, Nina, by Nina Stibbe
This delightful book is a collection of letters that Nina Stibbe wrote home when she nannied for a posh family in 1980s London. It’s a lovely, easy read, full of gentle British humour.
Mornings With Rosemary, by Libby Page
A customer came into the bookshop where I work asking for “a book where people are lovely to each other”, and I took her straight to this one. In Mornings With Rosemary (known in the UK as The Lido), a young lonely journalist and an older bereaved widow team up alongside their entire community to save their local outdoor swimming pool. It’s a truly charming book.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4, by Sue Townsend
This one is a modern British classic, and it’s laugh out loud funny in places. Adrian is growing up with divorcing parents in the Thatcherite Britain of the 1980s, coming to terms with his newfound hormones and raging crush on his schoolmate Pandora, and permanently devastated over the BBC’s constant rejection of his poetry. He’s not worrying about a pandemic or climate change — his anxiety if of a completely different order, and far more amusing to adults with the benefit of hindsight than to the teenagers it’s often marketed to.
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, by Abbi Waxman
I put this book into as many hands as possible at East City Bookshop. Warm, witty, and delightful, it’s the story of book nerd, introvert, and cat owner Nina Hill, whose delicately balanced and well-planned life gets upended when she discovers she has a whole family she never knew about, and meets a hot boy at her weekly trivia night. Reading this book feels like being hugged.
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