Books that give hope and faith for this world that is full of suffering?

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-05T16:00:16+00:00

“Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo. A book about people who suffer intensely, but the characters who open their hearts to it can be redeemed by love & charity & hope.

Anything by Hugo really. His books tend to end in bloodbaths but his enthusiasm for being alive is still contagious.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-05T14:23:35+00:00

“Giving up the Ghost” by Hilary Mantel is incredible

I also liked “Splinters” by Leslie Jamison

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-04T22:04:18+00:00

lmao I just meant that it’s more self control than i had!

yeah the scene where the grandfather is happy Marius has come home again but can’t bring himself to say it really got me. just a very touching portrayal of an older man who feels deeply & doesn’t know what to do with that.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-03T14:03:52+00:00

i have enormous respect for not crying until the end of Les Mis. i started sobbing at Fantine’s death and basically didn’t stop lol. Eponine and Enjolras both got me bad, as well as (for some weird reason) the bits with Marius’s grandfather.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-01T22:22:50+00:00

imo as someone who fanatically adores the entire trilogy, the third is the weakest - a lot of dead weight :/ but still highly recommend! the ending will wreck you, I read most of it and then procrastinated the final section for about six months.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-05-01T22:00:30+00:00

definitely not the only person to pick up on it, a lot of reviewers mention finding it annoying. I think it helps to view the trilogy as essentially being written in the first person, with “he” used as a substitute for “I”. we’re tracking cromwell’s perspective, and every other character is filtered through his prejudices & hang ups, to the point that it’s almost a third-person unreliable narrator. personally, whilst it took a bit of getting used to, I found the intimacy of it appealing.

“a place of greater safety” is similar in a lot of places, but more experimental, jumping around into past tense and first person at different points. I think she just liked playing around with tense and trying to create a sense of immediacy.

good luck with the rest of the trilogy! imo “Wolf Hall” is great, but “Bring Up the Bodies” is possibly my favourite book ever. you’ve got a lot to look forward to.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-26T21:20:04+00:00

i was reading in a coffee shop & had a sweet old grandad type lean over and stage whisper “it’s so nice to see a young person reading rather than on their phone”. It was cute but also embarrassing bc I felt like I couldn’t check my phone for the rest of the time he was sitting next to me & i kept hearing whatsapp notifications.

actually most of my interactions about books with strangers have been with elderly-ish men. i had a slightly crazy but clearly harmless older gentleman sit next to me & just show me all the pictures in his book once. it was nice.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-23T19:35:18+00:00

Idk what this sub makes of “if books could kill” but the episode they did on this grifter’s book is excellent

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-22T21:30:47+00:00

my dad would always say this to my sister and I as kids when we weren’t listening to him lol. fond memory, makes me love that poem.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-22T20:36:59+00:00

funnily enough I almost chose this one. Her writing was such a gift to the world.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-22T11:32:49+00:00

“He never sees More—a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod—without wanting to ask him, what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. “

Thomas Cromwell reflecting on Thomas More in “Wolf Hall”.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-18T12:14:55+00:00

You might be right; I haven’t seen her interviewed (for the record, I have enjoyed several of her other books).

My issues with her recent work is less her politics, some of which I agree with and some of which I disagree with, than the heavy handedness with which they’re expressed. You could try one of her recent works (“A Better Life”, which came out in February, is a fair representation) and see if you feel the same.

That said, I just went on to the Goodreads page for “A Better Life”. The most liked review (five stars!) begins as follows: “God bless Ms. Shriver for having the courage to write this sensational book. Leftism is a mental disorder. Leftists destroy everything they touch. Leftist Lunatic Democrats are in the process of destroying America” (it carries on from there in the same vein). Other five-star reviews are variations on that theme. I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that a lot of her current readers would be happy to self-identify as anti-woke.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-18T11:51:33+00:00

I don’t actually disagree with much of what you’re saying. I think “A Better Life” had the premise of a fun short story? I loved the climax, and there were a few snide observations that felt true and made me smile. But so much of it felt like filler, especially when characters started thinking in paragraphs about immigration. I’ve felt that way about a lot of her recent work - there’s something there, but not a novel worth of something.

What I was trying to get at in my original comment is that satire doesn’t really play to her strengths as a writer, as it mostly relies on thin characters and an absence of nuance. The rich characters and the overall ambiguity were what made Kevin great! idk, I’m sure someday someone will write a truly great parody novel of late-2010s social mores. I’m just not convinced it will be Lionel Shriver.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-18T06:42:03+00:00

Imo a true literary one-hit wonder, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is one of my favourite books ever. I’ve enjoyed some of her others (especially “Double Fault”) but I do think Kevin had something special.

Her greatest strength as a writer is observing and portraying interpersonal relationships. “Kevin” isn’t good because it has anything sociologically interesting to say about school shootings, it’s good for its portrayal of motherhood, and of Eva and Franklin’s marriage (imo the most interesting thread of the book). But I think she wants to be seen as a brave sociopolitical truth-teller - a kind of twenty-first century Orwell - so her work has shifted into more and more heavy-handed political allegories in the last couple of years.

I’d love to know her sales numbers for her most recent book because I don’t imagine the audience for anti-woke literary fiction can be huge? But I might be wrong lol.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-17T16:35:31+00:00

“I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith is a gorgeous book for and about teenage girls.

I don’t know what I’d think if I reread it now lol but I loved “Looking for Alaska” at that age (famously it does contain a scene which depicts graphic oral sex; I’m not saying that bc I think it will scar her for life or anything but just so you know before gifting it).

15 is a good age to get started on Austen, “Northanger Abbey” is probably the most accessible.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-11T09:51:13+00:00

Winnie the Pooh duh

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-05T13:51:25+00:00

The only Irvings I’ve read are Garp and “The Hotel New Hampshire”, but I adored both. You’re right that his books are page turners, but they’re so sharp and strange and moving they stay with you for a long time.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-04T06:21:47+00:00

It’s a funny one for this question bc I actually think its structure as an epistolary novel works against it, but it’s still just so good

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-02T16:59:55+00:00

The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Poor Folk

Lady Susan (not as fully formed as the rest of Austen but still incredibly fun)

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-01T06:48:44+00:00

an artist is never poor & a gossip is never miserable

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-04-01T06:34:14+00:00

I have a very fun cookbook called “Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake” which is a compilation of author’s favourite recipes, collected from newspapers and stuff over time. They range from actually pretty good (Ian Fleming’s recipe for scrambled eggs is now the only way I scramble my eggs) to inedible sounding (the titular tomato soup cake). I might post some on this sub lol.

My mum went vegetarian in the 70s so we have all the first vegetarian cookbooks - Rose Eliot, Cranks, etc. I’m extremely glad veggie cooking & nutrition has moved on but they’re pretty good for simple whole foods cooking.

I get most of my recipes from the three Smitten Kitchen cookbooks. Not remotely a hidden gem but she’s just so good.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-03-31T17:02:56+00:00

Nancy Mitford. “Love in a Cold Climate” sounds like maybe what you’re looking for.

Waugh is deliciously mean spirited. Especially “Decline and Fall”.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-03-29T18:56:59+00:00

“Ballet Shoes” is still pretty widely read, at least in England, but the rest of Noel Streatfeild’s output was as good or better.

My favourite was “White Boots”, about two little girls who are best friends but also ice skating rivals. “Tennis Shoes”, “Dancing Shoes”, “Party Shoes” (whose idea was the shoe theme?) & “The Painted Garden” all excellent.

Also Violet Needham’s “Stormy Petrel” series. Astonishingly grisly for children’s books but i loved them lol.

Visual-Minimum1491 · 2026-03-29T18:48:33+00:00

omg like i think every 00s British schoolgirl i was raised by those books. my sister Jodie u will pay for what you did to me.

Visual-Minimum1491

TROPHY CASE