POSITIVELY GOOD READS 

Books I've Read Recently

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Recommended

About a Boy (1998) by Nick Hornby

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon

Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast (1993) by Bill Richardson

Back When We Were Grownups (2001) by Anne Tyler    

Banishing Verona (2004) by Margot Livesey

The Bean Trees (1988) by Barbara Kingsolver

Bel Canto (2001) by Ann Patchett

Blue Shoes and Happiness (2007) by Alexander McCall Smith

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens

The Chosen (1967) by Chaim Potok

The Cider House Rules (1985) by John Irving

Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons

Cold Sassy Tree (1984) by Olive Ann Burns

Cotillion (1953) by Georgette Heyer

The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) by Sarah Orne Jewett

Cranford (1853) by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) by Mark Haddon

Delta Wedding (1946) by Eudora Welty

The Diary of a Nobody (1892) by George and Weedon Grosssmith

The Enchanted April (1923) by Elizabeth von Arnim

Excellent Women (1952) by Barbara Pym

Father Melancholy's Daughter (1991) by Gail Godwin

Foreign Affairs (1984) by Alison Lurie

The Fountain Overflows (1956) by Rebecca West

Franny and Zooey (1961) by J. D. Salinger

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café (1986) by Fannie Flagg

The Gate of Angels (1990) by Penelope Fitzgerald

Gaudy Night (1936) by Dorothy L. Sayers

The Girls of Slender Means (1963) by Muriel Spark

The Grass Harp (1951) by Truman Capote

Happy All the Time (1978) by Laurie Colwin

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901) by Arthur Conan Doyle

I Capture the Castle (1948) by Dodie Smith

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979) by Italo Calvino

Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë

The Joy Luck Club (1989) by Amy Tan

The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867) by Anthony Trollope

Like Water for Chocolate (1989) by Laura Esquivel

Lincoln (1984) by Gore Vidal

The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil (1983) by Fay Weldon

Lives of Girls and Women (1971) by Alice Munro

Lolly Willowes (1926) by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Lonesome Dove (1985) by Larry McMurtry

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen (2008) by Sylvie James

Love among the Ruins (1947) by Angela Thirkell

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955) by Sloan Wilson

A Month in the Country (1980) by J. L. Carr

Mother and Son (1955) by Ivy Compton-Burnett

My Antonia (1918) by Willa Cather

The Nice and the Good (1968) by Iris Murdoch

North of Hope (1990) by Jon Hassler

Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982) by John Cheever

On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon (1998) by Kaye Gibbons

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) by Jeanette Winterson

Paradise Postponed (1985) by John Mortimer

A Peaceful Retirement (1996) by Miss Read

Persuasion (1817) by Jane Austen

Possession (1990) by A. S. Byatt

Practical Magic (1995) by Alice Hoffman

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (2003) by Elinor Lipman

The Pursuit of Love (1945) by Nancy Mitford

The Queen of the Tambourine (1991) by Jane Gardam

Right Ho, Jeeves (1922) by P. G. Wodehouse

A Room with a View (1908) by E. M. Forster

Roxanna Slade (1998) by Reynolds Price

Scoop (1937) by Evelyn Waugh

The Secret Life of Bees (2002) by Sue Monk Kidd

The Spectator Bird (1976) by Wallace Stegner

The Stone Diaries (1993) by Carol Shields

Stones for Ibarra (1984) by Harriet Doerr

Therapy (1995) by David Lodge

Time and Again (1986) by Jack Finney

To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee

A Town Like Alice (1950) by Nevil Shute

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) by Betty Smith

The Uncommon Reader (2007) by Alan Bennett

Vein of Iron (1935) by Ellen Glasgow

Walking Across Egypt (1997) by Clyde Edgerton

White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith

The Woman in White (1860) by Wilkie Collins


Mixed reviews

The Alchemist (1988) by Paulo Coehlo

The Best of Friends (1995) by Joanna Trollope

Chocolat (1999) by Joanne Harris

The Giant's House (1996) by Elizabeth McCracken

How to Make an American Quilt (1991) by Whitney Otto

The Jane Austen Book Club (2004) by Karen Joy Fowler

The Magnificent Spinster (1985) by May Sarton

Open House (2000) by Elizabeth Berg

Siddhartha (1922) by Hermann Hesse

The Time-Traveler's Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger

Welcome to the Great Mysterious (2000) by Lorna Landvik

Some might not find these upbeat
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) by Mark Twain

Housekeeping (1981) by Marilynne Robinson

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by Julia Alvarez

Moon Tiger (1986) by Penelope Lively

Queen Lear (1988) by Molly Keane

Ragtime (1976) by E. L. Doctorow

The Risk Pool (1986) by Richard Russo

Sula (1973) by Toni Morrison

A Summons to Memphis (1986) by Peter Taylor

What's Bred in the Bone (1985) by Robertson Davies



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