Q: What can I read to help me de-stress after a bad day at work?
Health worker at a regional trauma centre, 63
A: Novelist Tim Lott, whose latest book, When We Were Rich (Scribner, £16.99), will be published on 27 June, writes:
You do not want anything that requires too much mental effort. So avoid grabbing, if you possibly can, the nearest Thomas Pynchon or Virginia Woolf. On the other hand, something overly dumb or badly written is also off the cards as it can be too aesthetically upsetting – no Jeffrey Archer or EL James (or The Little Book of Calm for that matter).
Historical fiction is a great way to de-stress. I read Golden Hill by Francis Spufford last year and as intelligent a book I have rarely read. Or try JG Farrell’s great The Siege of Krishnapur. A short thriller is also a lovely way to relax – try Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin for a masterclass in absorption. And, of course, How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson if you’re in the habit of working too hard.
I find short stories unsatisfying, so I stick to essays by Tom Wolfe or John Steinbeck for a brief dip before I fall asleep. Wolfe’s Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is my favourite, an extended essay way ahead of its time. Steinbeck’s best collection is Of Men and Their Making.
You could try laughing yourself back to sanity. Anything by PG Wodehouse, of course – The Code of the Woosters is as good as any, and early William Boyds are witty without being trite. Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist is a great book about recovering from trauma (if you think you’ve had a bad day, you’ve nothing on Macon Leary).
If you want a new worldview to help you think about stress in the long term, read some Zen texts – Alan Watts’s The Meaning of Happiness – is a masterpiece of de-stressing in 120 pages, and Lin Yutang’s The Importance of Living has the advantage of being funny as well as wise.
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