I’m a postpartum mom and hormonal and have found traumatic themes much more upsetting than I used to, especially if they involve children.
I’m open to something lighthearted, but it doesn’t have to be. Interesting non-fiction would also be fine. I’m a big history nerd, also enjoy science and medicine. Just no dying or separated children and parents stuff.
I’ve read a ton of fantasy this year so need a break from that.
Already read and enjoyed House in the Cerulean Sea and Howl’s Moving Castle.
Thanks in advance!
by miosgoldenchance
3 Comments
“The Diary of a Bookseller” by Shaun Bythell
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot
“A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson
“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer
“The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” by Alan Bradley
“The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” by Gabrielle Zevin
“The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World” by Andrea Wulf
“84, Charing Cross Road” by Helene Hanff
This is a great time to read some Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice and Emma are my personal favourites). Nothing particularly terrible happens.
Lucy Maud Montgomery also wrote some lighthearted-feeling, beautiful stories with rounded characters and a real but optimistic-feeling estimation of human nature. I’d recommend the Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat duology as definitely having no traumatic child things. The Anne of Green Gables series has a few kinda-traumas while overall having a positive outlook, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend starting there (basically: Anne has a rougher off-page orphan past before coming to green gables, and then has the green-hair incident and a few minor bullying-skirmishes. I believe that’s the worst of it. The next several books in that series are pretty safe for child stuff I think. The last Rilla of Ingleside book does take place on the homefront in WWI though so I wouldn’t read that one.)
I know you mentioned you’re kinda burned out on fantasy, but I also want to make a plug for Terry Pratchett’s Guards Guards Guards! and THUD! are hilarious, set in Discworld, and feature a thoughtful male detective who rushes home every day to read a bedtime story to his young son. You might enjoy those.
Good luck!
Bill Bryson is lovely and has some different ‘flavors’ of nonfic. In a Sunburned Country is fun, but I also liked his book about the history of the home.
If you just need something light and happy, my go to for ‘no brain necessary’ short reads are the Chicken Soup for the Soul funny collections. I can’t think of the exact title right now but Meijer has both of them in the US.
I couldn’t even watch nature documentaries after my son was born. I could not stand anything where a baby animal was in trouble and certainly not a child.