The Happiest Book You've Ever Read

[Lykren]

In contrast to the most depressing. Personally, I find life more depressing than literature, so I'm always happy to pick up a well written book, even if it is The Good Soldier, The Beautiful and Damned, or The Idiot.

For me, the happiest book I've ever read was Ulysses. There was such joy and appreciation for life in each ecstatic whirling sentence.

What about you?

[Kyriakos]

I do not go out of my way to read happy books, but maybe The Little Prince?
I actually like that book, and it does have a positive message, although not all of it is empty of sadness, or even misery.
But i am sure there are books that are a lot happier than that, such as those written with comedic intent perhaps. Discworld? (although i confess i never read any of it)

[Volya]

I can't remember reading any books that have generally happy tones...

[Lykren]

It's true, great literature seems to all be very sad sometimes. Leaves of Grass is another happy one I can think of, though.

[Desolation]

For me, the happiest book I've ever read was Ulysses. There was such joy and appreciation for life in each ecstatic whirling sentence.

Interesting choice...I've got a friend who told me that he gets depressed for weeks after reading Ulysses. He says it's just so bleak.

I'm more inclined to agree with you, though. Even if the book has its bleak moments, I think the general tone is one of hope and affirmation. And, I always feel a certain brightness in my stomach when I think about it.

I'd cast my vote for Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man over Ulysses, though. Portrait helped a great deal to wash my cynicism and general negativity towards life away.

[russellb]

'brave new world' is a generally happy place but to make it interesting, huxley shows us it through the eyes of a few unhappy people. As for 'ulysses' it has just about everything in it, including the source of much happiness (and misery) for Dubliners...Irish wine. Which when you you travel to Dublin it seems some waiters will assume you want to drink because you want to do the whole Irish thing. What can I say? I'm Romanic...

[Lykren]

As for Brave New World, I think Huxley was trying to make a distinction between happiness and pleasure - the latter being the more common in the novel.

[Shevek]

Moll Flanders had a frivolous, upbeat tone in many parts, particularly the ending. Defoe was a brilliant satirist.

There was something very hopeful -- although I wouldn't say happy -- about Ender's Game.

And... that's about it.

[russellb]

As for Brave New World, I think Huxley was trying to make a distinction between happiness and pleasure - the latter being the more common in the novel.

It's some years since i read the novel so you'd have to elaborate so i could see exactly what you mean. I think i would say of the central characters that they may experience pleasure but they don't experience happiness. It is a novel drugged up on pleasure, yes, but unlike, say, Marx would we say that a typical epsilon moron experiences UNhappiness? Does this absence in effect entail happiness? Perhaps it starts to become an analytic question of what we mean by happiness. Would you say that it's only characters like Marx who could potentially experience happiness precisely because they experience unhappiness? Is j s mill right that there is a 'higher' level of happiness (that would imply more than is going on in an epsilon moron's head)? Personally i think i'd rather be an epsilon moron in 'Brave New World' than stuck at the bottom of the British class system. Put crudely i think i d be happier...because i'd be adusted to a situation without seeing doors slammed in my face and seeing my life slowly slide out of view...

[TheFifthElement]

Books I've found to be 'feel good' books are:
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Armin
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. Also Cloud Atlas, but in a different way.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

[JasmineJNR]

“The Book of Idle Pleasures”

[Lykren]

Personally i think i'd rather be an epsilon moron in 'Brave New World' than stuck at the bottom of the British class system. Put crudely i think i d be happier...because i'd be adusted to a situation without seeing doors slammed in my face and seeing my life slowly slide out of view...

My reply to that would be simply, just because you don't see it doesn't meant it isn't there. There are subtler kinds of unhappiness consisting in an overall dullness rather than one kind of particularly noticeable
pain.

[Zaza]

Here are some 'good books for bad days':
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (This one's my favourite, but they all do the trick).
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

[tonywalt]

Tolkien "The Hobbit"

Mark Twains's "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"

Charlotte Bronte "Jane Eyre"

[cafolini]

Mark Twains's Tom Sawyer, just to name one which was the first I read in that gender. It made me very happy and I reread it several times. My parents gave it to me because it was famous, but never knew what it meant to me.
As I grew older, many many books made me happy. So it is pointless to name one over another. Huckleberryfin? Letters From the Earth? A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court? I just have to give Twain's priority because we understood each other the most.

[prendrelemick]

The Tom Bombadil and Goldberry episode in Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring is happy happy happy.


(It was cut from the film though.)

[Lykren]

The Tom Bombadil and Goldberry episode in Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring is happy happy happy.


(It was cut from the film though.)

Good point! It's not a whole book, but still, so happy.