I’m looking for a book to gift my husband’s grandmother. The things I know about her are that she is an Anglophile, used to travel a lot, and likes literature. She enjoys stories that are fun and light hearted (nothing too dark and traumatic). Any suggestions?
by SleepyReads824
5 Comments
Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame is about an elderly woman who gets selected for a British baking competition.
Have you heard of A Case Of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith? It’s a lighthearted whodunnit set in the Temple in London and an interesting peek into the lawyers who work there. It’s set in the 1900s. Not too big or heavy and very English. The murder is very much glossed over, there’s no gory details
It’s a reasonably well-known book so she may have already read it – I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
It’s basically a coming of age story of a teenage girl – which might seem a strange recommendation for a 90-year-old! But I think it’s a book that appeals to all ages, it’s quintessentially English, it’s set in the 1930s, and it features an eccentric family living in poverty in a dilapidated castle. The father is a writer struggling to write his next novel. It’s fun and cosy, but it’s eccentric and strange, too. And two wealthy American brothers show up, so you get this mix of both American and English characters thrown together. It’s a wonderful book – one I frequently recommend to people.
G. K. Chesterton. Just about any of his 30-40 books. Quirky and often funny. He wrote history, biographies, essays, literary criticism, mysteries, poetry, etc.. Perhaps my favorite was Orthodoxy, but everything of his I’ve read has been very good.
Also, P. G. Wodehouse and his Bertie Wooster/Jeeves books. Charming, funny.
Barbara Pym novels