No not that sort of bedtime reading. Books that won't give you nightmares about maddened psychotic killers (yes, Jonathan Kellerman, I mean you) or books that kill off cherished characters or children (Dorothy Dunnett's brilliant, awful chess game in "Pawn In Frankincense") thus leading to angst and sleeplessness.
For me, that means a nice, safe, re-read to guarantee no ghastly surprises. And I'm somewhat ashamed to admit, some of my bedside table stack contains books that are being re-read for the *insert large number of your choice*th time. If a book is good once, it'll be good again. And again. And again.
Top of the pile is Georgette Heyer. At her best she rivals Miss Austen for sly humour and anthropological observation and although her books are a lot less dense than Austen, there's plenty of room in my life for the meringue of Heyer as well as the boiled fruit cake of Austen. My favourites would be "The Unknown Ajax", "Frederica" and "The Grand Sophy", but almost all of them make an appearance in the stack (except for "Cousin Kate", see previous caveat re: psycho killers).
Another safe re-read are the works of D. E. Stephenson. Light romance with some interesting sociological observations - particularly see the not-100%-fiction "Mrs Tim" tales subtitled "Leaves From An Officer's Wife's Diary" they are drawn from her own experiences following her Army husband. My favourites are "Miss Buncle's Book" and "Katherine Wentworth". Some are quite dated now (the social attitudes in "Miss Bun the Baker's Daughter" seem mid-Victorian) but there isn't one I'm not happy to re-read. I'm particularly love the way characters from one book appear briefly in another, connecting almost all in a complex web, although all are complete in themselves. So Edward, the anti-hero in "The Tall Stranger" turns up (unredeemed) in "The Musgraves" or Rhoda from "Vittoria Cottage", "Music in the Hills", "Winter and Rough Weather" pops into "Bel Lamington" as a dea ex machina. It makes the books seem even more real.
And, oh guiltiest of guilty pleasures, I love the novels of Essie Summers. She was a New Zealand writer of romance novels - Mills and Boon - but with a depth of character and ability to describe a scene that is missing in many a 'serious novelist''s work. She set her books primarily in the South Island, frequently on large sheep runs - see "A Place called Paradise", "The House of the Shining Tide". Often the hero was a minister or the heroine a minister's daughter, Summers, being a minister's wife had a fund of amusing and/or disastrous anecdotes to draw upon. The books are dated, the sexiest they get is a burning kiss, heroines or heroes are haunted by bygone scandals ("Sweet are the Ways") that would be food for a merry Facebook status update nowdays. But the quality of writing and the sheer niceness of the stories remain.
Anne
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