Headroom

Headroom is a BBC campaign that aims to raise awareness of the simple steps that people can take to help look after their own mental health and improve their lives.

Headroom and libraries are working together to produce a definitive list of the nation’s most inspiring and comforting books. Including:

• Books that make you feel good
• Books that help us accept ourselves
• Books about coping in difficult times
• Books to escape into
• Books that make you smile
• Books that make you feel hopeful

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Books to make you feel good

Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
An old man and his childhood sweetheart are united for the first time resulting in the consummation of an amor interruptus that spans half a century. This uplifting love story is set on the Colombian coast in the early 20th century.

The memory garden by Rachel Hore
Lamorna Cove, in Cornwall's far west, has become home to Melanie Pentreath, who has retreated to the overgrown gardens of Merryn Hall following the death of her mother and the end of a relationship. It is in this idyllic setting that Melanie meets Patrick, and they soon find themselves becoming closer to one another.

This book will save your life by AM Homes
Richard is a middle-aged divorcee trading stock out of his home in Los Angeles. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one, until two incidents conspire to hurl him back into the world.

Family matters by Cathy Woodman
When Lisa Baker's wedding anniversary entirely slips her husband's mind, she decides it's time to put the va va voom back into her marriage. But everything in Lisa's life seems to conspire against romance.

High fidelity by Nick Hornby
Hornby's narrator is a thirtysomething bloke who runs a London record store. He sells albums recorded the old-fashioned way--on vinyl--and is having a tough time making other transitions as well, specifically to adulthood.

Whatever makes you happy by William Sutcliffe
Matt works for a lads mag and dates girls half his age. Paul is an old hand at lying and evasion to keep his life choices a secret from his mother. Daniel spends his Saturday nights alone in his flat reading novels. Their mothers arrive, without warning, to stay with their sons for one week intent on getting them back onto the right path.

Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen
Jane Austen sets social snobbery against summer picnics; social rejection against the passion of real love. Her warm portrait of the relationship between two very different sisters contrasts her precise observation of vanity, selfishness and snobbery.

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Books that help us accept ourselves

Young Wives Tales by Adele Parks
Lucy stole Rose's 'happily ever after' because she wanted Rose's husband, Peter. But as Peter's interest diminishes and Lucy's domestic responsibilities increase, Lucy wonders if the 'happily ever after' is all a big con.

Anita and me by Meera Syal
The story of nine-year-old Meena, the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the Midlands' mining village of Tollington. The novel provides a vision of British childhood in the 1960s, a childhood caught between two cultures, each on the brink of enormous change.

Crocodile soup by Julia Darling
Gert is a curator in a northern museum. Through a series of flashbacks, she describes her eccentric and often surreal childhood - a hopelessly vain mother, a father constantly away at his African crocodile farm, and a brother who becomes a monk.

A walk to remember by Nicholas Sparks
Set in North Carolina in the late 1950s, this novel is a deeply moving story of two people discovering love for the first time and the changes this inevitably has on their lives.

Forgive and forget by Patricia Scanlan
It's left to, Connie - mother of the bride - to smooth things out and get everything sorted. But few weddings go as planned especially when there is tension between families. The events that occur at Debbie and Bryan's wedding will have far reaching repercussions that will leave their mark for years to come.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the most celebrated inspirational fable of our time, tells the story of a bird determined to be more than ordinary.

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Books about coping in difficult times

The lovely bones by Alice Sebold
A huge bestseller in America, this is a novel about life and death, forgiveness and vengeance, memory and forgetting. 14-year-old Susie Salmon, now dead, looks down on her family and friends from heaven.

The rain before it falls by Jonathan Coe
Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of a young blind girl, her cousin's granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at a party many years ago. This is a story of generations, and of the relationships within a family.

Miss Garnet’s angel by Salley Vickers
Miss Garnet's Angel is a voyage of discovery, a novel of Venice but also a rich story of the explosive possibilities of change in all of us at any time.

A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
'A Thousand Splendid Suns' is a chronicle of Afghan history, and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, and the salvation to be found in love.

Body surfing by Anita Shreve
The bestselling author of 'A Wedding in December' returns with a scintillating novel about a young widow torn between loving two brothers during one lone New England summer.

The horse whisperer by Nicholas Evans
In the still of a snow-covered morning in upstate New York, a girl out riding her horse is hit by a 40-ton truck. Though horribly injured, both thirteen-year-old Grace Maclean and her horse Pilgrim survive. But the impact on their lives is devastating.

Tenth circle by Jodi Picoult
When Daniel Stone was a child, he was teased mercilessly, but he fought back and became a 'bad kid', full of anger, until he got a girl pregnant and reinvented himself. However, fifteen years later when his daughter is date raped, Daniel finds himself struggling with a rage that could destroy him and his family.

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Books to escape into

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. A man brings his 10-year-old son to the library and allows him to choose one book to keep. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find.

A sweet obscurity by Patrick Gale
Patrick Gale gives readers a sad tale of the lengths to which we will go to seek protection and find family. Dido, the nine-year-old heroine and emotional centre of the novel, knows that the adults who surround her, the adults who should know better, depend on her for happiness.

Pillars of the earth by Ken Follett
This is a timeless story of passion and idealism, about a group of men and women whose destinies are fatefully linked with the building of a cathedral. It is an epic drama from the author of The Needle and On Wings of Eagles.

The time traveler’s wife by Audrey Niffenegger
This is the story of Henry and Clare, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36, and were married when Clare was 20 and Henry was 28. This is possible only because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with chrono-displacement-disorder.

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. When the novel opens in the 1970's, he is a university student, having survived a 'traditional' school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a witheringly frank account of English education.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Long ago when magic still existed in England, the greatest magician of all was the Raven King. Now at the start of the 19th century, the Raven King is only a myth and England no longer believes in magicians. But then Mr Norrell makes his incredible talents known.

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Books that make you smile

The Code of the Woosters by P G Wodehouse
Take Gussie Fink-Nottle, the soupy Madeleine Bassett, Old Pop Bassett, the unscrupulous Stiffy Byng, the Rev. H. (Stinker) Pinker, an 18th century cow-creamer, a small notebook and mix with Aunt Dahlia. It all spells trouble for Bertie and Jeeves

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
For years, Nadezhda and Vera have had as little as possible to do with each other. But now they find they'd better learn how to get along, because since their mother's death their ageing father has been sliding into his second childhood, and an alarming new woman has just entered his life.

Behind the scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby's own life.

The unbearable lightness of scones by Alexander McCall Smith
The story of Bertie and his dysfunctional family continues in this fifth instalment alongside the familiar cast of favourites - Big Lou, Domenica, Angus Lordie, Cyril and others - in their daily pursuit of a little happiness.

The uncommon reader by Alan Bennett
The uncommon reader is none other that HM The Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace.

Barking by Tom Holt
Duncan's boss doesn't think that he's cut out to be a lawyer. He isn't a pack animal. He lacks the killer instinct. But when his best friend from school barges his way back into Duncan's life, with a full supporting cast of lawyers, ex-wives, zombies and snow-white unicorns, it's not long before things become distinctly unsettling.

Pirates! In an adventure with scientists by Gideon Defoe
Worried that his pirates are growing bored with a life of winking at pretty native ladies, sitting about on tropical beaches, and trying to stick enough jellyfish together to make a bouncy castle, the Pirate Captain decides it's time they had an adventure

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Books that make you feel hopeful

PS I love you by Cecelia Ahern
Holly and Gerry have a running joke - that she'd never cope without him. When Gerry dies of a brain tumour, Holly's life falls apart. She cannot see how to go on. But then she receives a package from Gerry - a letter, with a pile of envelopes. Each envelope contains 'to do' lists for each month.

Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin
Having survived the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers, Michael Tolliver has learned to embrace the sacred dailiness of life, the loving connections that sustain him in the hardest of times. This journey takes him from the garden of a troublesome client to the bed of a younger man to the parlour of a wise octogenarian.

Random acts of heroic love by Danny Scheinmann
In this debut novel, Danny Scheinmann paints a dramatic portrait of two men sustaining their lives through the memory of love.

Pay it forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Social studies teacher Reuben St Clair assigns his class homework that involves them implementing a plan that will change the world. He could never have imagined that one of his pupils would achieve such a goal, but that's what happens in this tale.

The spare room by Helen Garner
Sceptical of the medical establishment, placing all her faith in an alternative health centre, Nicola is determined to find her own way to deal with her cancer. In the weeks that follow, her battle against the disease will turn not only her own life upside down but also those of every one around her.

For one more day by Mitch Albom
Charley loses his job, leaves his family, and decided, one night, to end his life. Somewhere between this world and the next, he encounters his mother, who died years ago, and he spends one last day with her - a day he never had on earth.

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