Happy Books (For V)

Was talking with V last night, and the subject of happy, or at least not-depressing, books came up, and I started trying to think of some.  So, the list I came up with as I walked home, for her & for me when I need a good but not-depressing read is:

The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff (which I literally stocked up on copies of)
The War of the Saints, Jorge Amado (one of my favorites of all time)
Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh (wrapped me up and swept me away; only hesitation in recommending it is that we're still waiting for the next installment of the Trilogy to come out)
The Good Thief, Hannah Tinti (I seriously almost cried, on the f***ing T, because it was so darn heartwarming)
Shark Dialogues, Kiana Davenport (it's not great lit, but I really enjoy it, and it's not crap)
In the Woods, Tana French (darker than the others - it's a murder mystery, after all - but so engaging)
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde (Fforde just makes me laugh, and giggle, and snort, and laugh some more...)

The Ibis Trilogy

The Ibis Trilogy, by Amitav Ghosh, opens with Sea of Poppies, which I thought was just wonderful - great characterizations (despite the fact there were several "main" characters, all were developed fully, AND maintained evenly throughout the book) and lovely, evocative descriptions of the settings (mainly India, at least for this book). I really couldn't recommend this book enough to anyone else, although I am a little concerned that it could be terribly inaccurate and I just don't know enough about that time period to know. It was interesting reading it shortly after Fish, Blood, and Bone (Leslie Forbes, opium trade, see NYTimes or The Independent for reviews), but this one left me anticipating the next installment. In the meantime, I've been having fun w/ the website, http://www.ibistrilogy.com/
My one complaint would probably be that Ghosh got waaaay more into trying to re-create period dialects and slang than needed - a little for flavor is awesome, but there were pages that made me flashback to trying to read Clockwork Orange sans that stupid little mini-dictionary.