A Book that Makes Me Happy

This instalment of the thirty day book challenge has been a real pain in my ass. I have perused a list of over a thousand books I've read trying to find one that makes me happy, and I am not happy with where I am at.

While there are a couple of books that I am happy when reading aloud ("Where the Wild Things Are" comes to mind), and a few books that I connect to happy times in my life (such as Michael Crichton's "Sphere"), the conclusion I've come to is that books just don't make me happy.

Books piss me off.

Books piss me off because of what they say.

Books piss me off because of the things they make me think. 

Books are full of important issues and themes that many people don't get, and that pisses me off.

Books depress me constantly because of the things they say about me, or the society I live in, or humanity, or about our future.

Books torture me.

Books obsess me.

Books make me face my fears. 

Books challenge me. 

Books bore me or excite me or move me, but they don't make me happy. 

Books piss me off. And I spend most of my life reading them, and another huge chunk of my life writing them, and another chunk of my life teaching them, and all of my life surrounded by them in bookshelves in my office and bedroom and the libraries I study in and in the electronics I use. 

I can't escape books. They are like air to me. 

But they don't make me happy. And if they make you happy (unless it is in some loosely connected way), I am going to go out on a limb and say you probably missed something in the book or something the book is saying beyond its pages. 

But I think this is all okay because books shouldn't make us happy. There are drugs for that.

So I'll just keep embracing the unhappiness and read a book or write a book until my last breath. It's all I can do.