I’m asking you all for something. In a sentence, tell me the book you’d hand me to read right now from your shelves. And why. The why is important too.
I’m particularly excited by the idea of stories, but if you have an amazing non-fiction recommendation, that’s good too. The only thing I refuse to read ever is the My Miserable Life abuse memoir genre.
Here’s my recommendation: Michael Rosen’s Sad Book.
I love a good picture book. It’s a perfect symbiosis, words and images feeding off each other so the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (oooh, by the way, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is another jolly good book, with pictures…)
But The Sad Book is special. I swear it’s done me more good over the years than therapy, drink or drugs. It reminds me I might actually be allowed to be happy, that I am just, “Sad, not bad.”
serendipturas 
Oh that is a marvellous book.
I’d hand you “Mr. Chartwell”, which is by Rebecca Hunt. I read it not long after publication, and it’s excellent as first books go. I’ve read it two or three times since, mostly because it’s a refreshingly honest take on the effect depression has on every area of someone’s life. For all that, it’s actually pretty upbeat and positive (without being annoyingly saccharine).
chicken soup for the soul. Any not me the volumes Not to everyone’s taste but they inspire and remind me why we keep doingi it
that was meant to read any one of the volumes
The Sad Book is wonderful. My current shelves are pretty empty. You can have ‘Vache qui rit & Carré frais: Les meilleures recettes’ if you like. Who wouldn’t want a recipe book for Laughing Cow cheese? Some of them look pretty tasty too…