Light reading is important to me, with trusted authors and series offering safe harbors when I’ve had enough of the sometimes stormy sail of reading literature, once I’m tired of nonfiction, or whenever I’m stressed.

In the early 2010s, I was driving out to day hike on most weekends, and I listened to every Agatha Christie audiobook there was, at first on cassette tapes checked out from the Tulsa libraries and later via purchases on Audible. She remains my favorite for audiobooks, but I exhausted her numerous mysteries long ago.

It was many moons ago that Carrie, my friend who is a librarian, put me onto Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael Chronicles, which were actually authored by Edith Pargeter. I read or listened to all of those, then all of her Inspector Felse mysteries, and having exhausted the supply of audiobooks, now I’m working my way through her standalones on my Kindles. She is not as cunning a plotter as Christie, nor as skilled with dialogue, but Pargeter brings a wonderful sense of realistic morals, atmosphere, and empathy to her stories that made her my favorite after Christie.

Whilst seeking more Ellis Peters audiobooks, I stumbled into Elizabeth Peters stories, actually authored by Barbara Mertz. While I loved her Vicky Bliss and Jacqueline Kirby series, I don’t care for the characters of her Amelia Peabody novels and found the ones she penned as Barbara Michaels too predictable and angry. So I’m done with her works.

Anxious to find more offerings, I tried Mary Roberts Rinehart, who was called the Agatha Christie of America, although her work is often far more dated. Audible is also my preferred format for Rinehart stories, and I am happy to find that Audible has been adding more titles. For awhile, several of her audiobooks had a terrible unprofessional narrator, but that appears to have been rectified. The age and variability of her novels leads me to place more trust and confidence in what remains of Pargeter and now Mary Stewart.

I’d read the first of Mary Stewart’s five Arthurian novels, but I didn’t continue with them, as that genre just isn’t for me. Happily I recently discovered her romance suspense novels, enjoying one from 1962 before zipping back to her first from 1955. As Elsie of the Tea and Ink Society has documented, Stewart authored 15 non-Arthurian romance suspense novels, so I am lucky to still have a baker’s dozen to savor.

I plan to parcel those out over time, as I do with Edith Pargeter’s works. I usually avoid binging on videos or books available in series, finding that can decrease my appreciation and enjoyment. That’s why I wait months before listening to another of Richard Osman’s audiobooks. I’m so invested in his Thursday Murder Club characters, and his works include such pathos, that they are special treats for me rather than light reading.

I haven’t always succeeded in my attempts to find new series. I read the first Flavia de Luce mystery by Alan Bradley, a series that my late acquaintance George Parks enjoyed, but it wasn’t my thing. I also read the first of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey series, but I found that character insufferable.

I asked Google’s AI for authors similar to Mary Stewart, and for classic authors it offered up Daphne du Maurier, Phyllis A. Whitney, M.M. Kaye, and Rinehart. I read du Maurier’s short story “The Birds”, which Hitchcock adapted into his famous film, years ago. While I liked it, I couldn’t get into Rebecca, her most famous novel and Hitchcock’s first American film. I have a feeling her blend of atmosphere and action is weighted too much toward the former for my taste. However, I did enjoy the Mexican Gothic novel The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas, which was clearly influenced by du Maurier. The “modern” mystery authors that Google suggested were Ruth Ware, Susanna Kearsley, and Michaels.

Over the years, I’d seen mentions of Louise Penny’s Three Pines mysteries featuring Chief Inspector Gamache. I’m no Francophile, so the setting of rural Quebec, where French is the sole official language, was more repulsive than attractive from a distance. However, when I saw her work again recommended by friends on Facebook, I finally sampled the first novel, Still Life. It was published back in 2006, and the series is clearly successful since it had grown to 19 books by 2024.

I was immediately drawn to Penny’s emphasis on characterization and the sharper edges of modernism amidst her cozy tale. I enjoyed her emphasis on community and belonging and appreciated that she never let the French become intrusive. I was also impressed by the resources on her website. Reportedly four out of every five people hear an “inner voice” when reading silently, and they should appreciate the pronunciation guide she provides, although I lack any sort of interior monologue, so that is less important for me.

Besides most mysteries, humor is another genre that I consider light reading. However, I’m quite selective. Back in 2021-2022, I listened to a dozen P.G. Wodehouse novels, mostly in the Blandings Castle series. I was binging on them as an escape from the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic, but they became formulaic. So I took a nine-month break before listening to another, and it has now been 19 months since I listened to one.

I will continue to avoid the three remaining Blandings Castle books for some time, as I’m quite tired of pigs. I instead plan to eventually listen to Sam the Sudden, the last novel that includes Lord Tilbury, who has been my favorite Wodehouse character. I don’t think Jeeves & Wooster would be to my taste, so after that it might be standalones as far as Wodehouse.

I liked Douglas Adams‘ Hitchhiker’s Guide series, in any media format, although its frenetic pace meant that reading them in succession gave me a headache. I’ve had an audiobook of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency downloaded into iTunes for well over a decade, but I have yet to engage with it.

Lately I’ve enjoyed listening to John Hodgman’s humorous essays in Vacationland, and I look forward to eventually listening to Medallion Status. There are several authors whom I insist upon listening to, rather than reading in text form, because of their engaging narrations: John Hodgman, David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Stephen Fry, and Simon Winchester.

I am delighted to have novels by Penny, Stewart, and Pargeter in hand, and audiobooks by Osman and others in ear, to ease my transition in mid-2026 from 40 years of employment into an unknowable number of years of retirement.