Help choosing a book to read to my grandma (TW: cancer, death)

TLDR: Looking for a book or series (preferably fantasy / escapist in some way) that reads-aloud well, has long enough chapters that one-or-two-a-week can be enjoyable, is easy to follow, is at least somewhat upbeat, and has zero mention of cancer, the death of children/teens, or grieving parents (even if their kids are adults), and minimal sex.

ACTUAL POST:

My uncle died of cancer late last year, and my 70 year old grandmother has been taking it *very* poorly, as she dedicated her entire life to family and her children in particular.

I decided I wanna call her and read to her like once a week or so just so she has a little bit of extra contact and something to look forward to. Sort of weird I know, but it’s something we used to do- when I was in Middle School I read four of the seven Harry Potter books to her over the phone like this. It was sort of like a weird version of a book club because we’d read and then talk about the chapter, plus she just loves books and being read to in general.

My first instinct was to do Harry Potter again but I figure given that the whole story is about a mother dying for her child who then goes on to be nearly-murdered for their whole adolescence, it might not work great as a distraction from the grief she’s going through. Most other series I’ve read recently (basically a bunch of Brandon Sanderson and Stephen King), are also sort of problematic in that regard since they’re typically about young people (or at least people still in contact with their parents) risking their lives in different fantasy scenarios. If not, they’re too scary to be properly “escapist.” I’d also need to find a book with nearly no sex, since I don’t really wanna read sex scenes to my grandmother.

Another factor other than content is complexity and length. My grandma isn’t *senile* but she’s not as quick to grock new stuff as she used to be. So if it’s an ultra-complex book with a million plot threads and characters it might be hard to follow reading one or two chapters a week. Ideally the chapters should also be long enough that you get a satisfying chunk of story out of each of them- almost episodic would be ideal.

I recently ordered “The Great Book of Amber” impulsively because it was on sale and I’m a sucker for giant tomes, but I’ve never read the Amber series. Would that be good?

Anyway thanks for any recommendations in advance, and extra thanks if you read the whole post.

by BagOfSmallerBags