Palate Cleansers

Reading Reflections - for when life (and reading) get too much

May 24, 2026

woman reading book sitting beside electronic keyboard — Photo by Hümâ H. Yardım on Unsplash

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Occasionally, I take a brief break from essays exploring the themes of women’s literature and lives and reflect on my own recent reading.

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This month’s Reading Reflections essay was inspired by Petya K. Grady essay on her month of reading Romance and my own re-reading this year of the novels of Jean Rhys.

Let me explain.

In Petya’s excellent essay, she sets out her experiment of attempting to read Romance as a genre in the month of April. This wasn’t an altogether successful experiment (please go and read the whole essay and come back; it is excellent!). But she raised an interesting question:

What do we read when the hard stuff gets too much?

This led me to consider what I’m terming ‘Palate Cleansers’ - the books we might turn to when the more difficult reading gets too much.

Since the beginning of January, I have committed to a personal reading project of reading (and in some cases, re-reading) the novels, short fiction, biographies, letters, and key literary criticism of Jean Rhys. Rhys is an author I have unapologetically championed and written about several times in these pages, so returning to her work isn’t exactly a chore.

Yet…her books are not exactly cheerful, shall we say? Her characters are most often unhappy, lost, vulnerable women, who wander the streets of Paris and London in search of men to rescue them. They often have little agency, and turning the last page of a Rhys novel doesn’t exactly leave me with happy vibes (despite absolutely loving her writing style!).

But this essay isn’t about reducing the ‘easier,’ or more ‘pleasant’ novels or novelists to appear in any way ‘less than’ the more classic or literary fiction authors I read. It is just that the books and authors I enjoy in between reading more difficult fiction can feel somewhat more uplifting.

When you turn the last page of these stories, you feel as though the characters beyond the pages are going to be fine.

You leave them possibly at a crossroads, or in a state of flux or transition. Maybe you even leave them in a quandary about what to do next. But essentially: they are characters that you feel will continue to live another day.

With something like a Jean Rhys novel, this is never entirely the case.

When I feel I need to break up these more difficult narratives, I turn to what I’m calling, for the purposes of this essay: “Palate Cleansers.” These are the books and authors I return to when I need a break from the harder, literary works that often occupy my languid TBR list, and generally fall into one of these three categories:

A re-read of a reliably good book
A nonfiction book - usually essays or nature inspired
A book from one of a shortlist of reliable authors

I will examine these three categories in the following essay, looking at how these have looked in practice over the first few months of 2026.

Re-reads

We all have books that stay with us for one reason or another. But some books just remind us of a feel-good emotion when we close the front cover. These are the ones I return to to break up the sometimes difficult emotions stirred up by more difficult or literary titles.

This month, I have returned to Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser for a fix of feel-good emotions. Heiny’s book contains the most loveable, strange, quirky, flawed characters you are likely to encounter. And yet…they feel just as believable for all that.

‘Of course, that was the bad thing about the thrift store. You knew everything was there for a reason, like a chipped handle. You brought other people’s things home—soup tureens, suitcases, husbands—and tried to love them as best you could, but it didn’t always work.’ — Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

Based in Boyne City, Northern Michigan, the book features Jane, a newly arrived Grade 2 teacher at the local school. On her first week in Boyne City, she accidentally locks herself out of her house, and is “recused” by Duncan, local carpenter and sometimes locksmith. He has also, Jane discovers, slept with most of the women in Boyne City. They strike up an immediate relationship, but this isn’t a romance novel by any means. What follows are sections falling into various years (around 3-4 years apart) which show Jane as she assimilates into life in Boyne City, the relationships she endures, the friendships, the catastrophes.

‘“…you’ve been saying for years that the way shops put a tip jar by the cash registers is the cause of decline in civilized living…”. Their conversation was like the apple dumplings, perfectly crimped around the edges and sealed off. Jane couldn’t get in.’ — Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

Early Morning Riser just has so much heart. You are willing the characters to find their way and to survive their ordinary, extraordinary lives.

A similarly satisfying palate cleanser from this category occurred at the start of the year, when I returned to Anna Quindlen’s Alternate Side. I wrote about that in my March Reading Reflections, but briefly, the book features Nora, a middle-class museum curator who lives on a desirable street in New York City. The book examines class, race, marriage, enduring relationships, a sense of place and belonging. All the big subjects, but in a subtle, almost hypnotic way, as we inhabit the mindscape of Nora and her world.

‘People go through life thinking they are making decisions, when they’re really just making plans, which is not the same thing at all. And along the way, they get a little damaged, lots of tiny cracks, holding together but damaged still.’― Anna Quindlen, Alternate Side

Nonfiction

I am an occasional nonfiction fan, perhaps not as much as novels, but I do enjoy a foray into a nonfiction book every other month, I’d say. Though I don’t tend towards the more general ‘self-help’ genre, I do like something which touches on my interests and thoughts at specific times, and actively seek these out when I’m interested in something.

In April, I re-visited a book I read many years ago when I stumbled upon the world of Minimalism and Simple Living, courtesy of Marie Kondo and the like. That book was Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki.* In it, the author explores his life in Japan as a young man and how discovering Minimalism helped him to realise what was really important in life. It also explores insights into the philosophy behind this movement, and offers small practices we can take to bring more simplicity into our own lives. For anyone similarly interested in these topics, I’d say Sasaki’s book is one of the best places to start.

“Want to know how to make yourself instantly unhappy? Compare yourself with someone else.”― Fumio Sasaki, Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism *(also known as Goodbye, Things: On Minimalist Living).

Whilst Sasaki’s book provides a template that does not fit everyone (he lives alone, in a city, and has no children), I find his explorations into alternate ways of living more simply anathema to the current world and its issues. It made me want to throw out my phone and had me decluttering the cupboards anew. (Apologies to my husband, who now can’t find anything, but on the positive, does have a very orderly wardrobe 😂).

In April, I also enjoyed Kathyrn Tann’s collection of essays in Seaglass: Essays, Moments and Reflections. Begun during the pandemic, when Tann struggled to connect with nature in her apartment block in Manchester, UK, the essays explore her re-discovery of the importance of seeking nature in unexpected places, as well as reflections on a childhood by the sea.

‘Places are not separate from people – not on an island like ours. Places are a collection of stories. They hold each chapter in their hedgerows, their forest floors, their bricked-up river banks and their cake-layer cliffs. They hide it in their shingle; not hard to find when you take a moment, a proper look.’
—Katherine Tann, ‘Seaglass’, from Seaglass: Essays, Moments and Reflections

I often turn to nature-inspired memoirs or essay collections when seeking palate cleanser books, and this one did not disappoint. The writing is lyrical and poetic and made me want to start writing nature inspired micro-essays again 😀

‘To distract from the noise of my emotions with the balm of endless content.
To distract from gaping silence with the noise of endless content.
To never be alone.
Being unmoored means dwelling in a singular experience.
It means being what we are for a moment: individual.’
— Katherine Tann, ‘Unmoored,’ from Seaglass: Essays, Moments and Reflections Reliable authors

Reliable authors

My list of reliable authors will likely not mirror yours, but I think having a stable of writers or specific genres you know you can pick up and which are unlikely to disappoint is priceless. These can also be useful to drag you out of a reading funk.

Two authors I re-read every single year, already being a completionist in everything they have written, are Mary Wesley and Armistead Maupin. In February, I read the tenth and (so far) final installment of Maupin’s Tales of the City series, Mona of the Manor, a gift from my daughter.

But there are other authors I turn to at these times which have books I have (joyfully!) yet to discover.

Two of these are Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Strout, both of which I find write similarly lovable, flawed characters (are you seeing a theme here??) who get under my skin but don’t leave me exhausted.

The last book I read by Tyler was French Braid, a story featuring Robin and Mercy Garrett through the decades, as family rifts and identities are sought. As the final of the couple’s children fly the nest, Mercy takes a small studio above a garage in which to paint. Setting herself up in business as an artist for the first time, we see Mercy as she increasingly pulls away from her husband and family, to carve out more space and time to follow her passions.

“Sometimes people live first one life and then another life,” her grandmother said. “First a family life and then later a whole other kind of life. That’s what I’m doing.” ― Anne Tyler, French Braid

I find that the Tyler books I have read so far all have similar themes of women who need to strike out on their own, or to find their voice in the midst of marriages and motherhood. In January, I read her latest novel, Three Days in June (another gift!) and was once again spirited away into the world of a midlife woman, divorced, who is re-united with her ex-husband for the three days leading up to their only daughter’s wedding.

What I find remarkable about Tyler’s writing is the way she exposes the flaws and idiosyncrasies of her characters without actually needing to point them out. As readers, we are expected to read between the lines and do the heavy lifting on what motivates them. These are not exciting, whirlwind escapades; they are gentle glimpses into the ordinary lives we (often as women) live.

‘Someday I’d like to be given credit for all the times I have not said something that I could have said.’ ― Anne Tyler, Three Days in June

Elizabeth Strout is similarly an author who understands people. The humanity exposed through characters such as Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge is sublime. Whilst I find her work often more emotional that Tyler’s, I emerge from a reading of her books with a general sense that people are good, honest, vulnerable, and yet - you guessed it - flawed.

‘She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people.’
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

I can’t wait to get my hands on her latest novel The Things We Never Say, which my library app tells me I am forty-seventh in the queue for…oh well, I can always re-read my copy of Olive, Again if I need a pick-me-up 🙂

Writing this essay has evolved into an introspection of my own reading mores. I discovered that I am inherently drawn to characters who are imperfect, unique, often quirky, and almost always, flawed. I realised that these are also the people I am most drawn to in real-life.

Give me someone real and human to have a conversation with. Someone who isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, but who also knows how to show compassion and humility. Somebody who shares a little of themselves, but is interested in who other people are and why they do what they do.

These are the characters I seek in my reading life, and as it turns out, in my real and actual life as well!

Please share with me in the comments what you like to read when life (or reading) just gets too heavy. Do you have a favourite genre, writer, or even specific books to return to? I’d love to know!