Internet Resources
- Can You Measure the Happiness of Your Favorite Story?On Happy Plots, Machines and Literature
- Bookend; Life, Literature and the Pursuit of HappinessWhen Walt Whitman declared in 1855 that ''the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem,'' what kind of country was he talking about?
- Can Reading Make You Happier?For all avid readers who have been self-medicating with great books their entire lives, it comes as no surprise that reading books can be good for you.
- Where is happiness in 20th-century fiction?People are rarely content in English novels of the last century – except, it seems, when pigs are involved.
Research
- Literature and HappinessAccording to long-standing ideas that persist around the globe in numerous cultures, narrative needs to be rooted in conflict and tension. [...]is the protagonist's death necessary here, as it is in "To Build a Fire" and "The Open Boat"? Since the narrative contains all manner of themes about social convention, how to live happily, nonconformity, and other topics—not simply death in the face of the natural world's seeming indifference—it would seemingly not need to end in tragic death. According to poetic tradition and the taste it has shaped, a lyric can be happy in content, theme, imagery, and perspective but still leave satisfied the reader who craves artistic complexity. In the last forty-plus years, pessimism has undoubtedly prevailed as the general platform on which literary scholars stand. Since the late sixties, this critical orientation has taken root deeply in Anglophone literary studies, so predictably, the lyric has proven to be problematic.
- Perspectives from the Happiness Literature and the Role of New Instruments for Policy AnalysisAfter having been ignored for a long time by economists, happiness is becoming an object of
serious research in 21st century economics. In Section 2 we sketch the present status of
happiness economics. In Section 3 we consider the practical applicability of happiness
economics, retaining the assumption of ordinal individual utilities. In Section 4 we introduce a
cardinal utility concept, which seems to us the natural consequence of the happiness
economics methodology. In Section 5 we sketch how this approach can lead to a normative
approach to policy problems that is admissible from a positivist point of view. Section 6
concludes.
Book Lists
- 100 Must-Read Books About HappinessThis is a list of 100 books that deal, somehow, with happiness. There’s a huge amount of variation on this list. The non-fiction books about happiness are more straightforward—many of them are self-help books that deal directly with happiness, helping to organize a life around a positive center, while others are memoirs that reflect on mental health and how to make your way towards a successful ending.
- Listopia - Happiness Book ListsA list of Goodreads lists on happiness.
Fiction
Happiness, Like Water
"Astonishing. Okparanta's narrators render their stories with such strength and intimacy, such lucidity and composure, that in each and every case the truths of their lives detonate deep inside the reader's heart, with the power and force of revelation."--Paul Harding Here are Nigerian women at home and transplanted to the United States, building lives out of longing and hope, faith and doubt, the struggle to stay and the mandate to leave, the burden and strength of love. Here are characters faced with dangerous decisions, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties. Here is a world marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, folktales, buses that break down and never start up again. Here is a portrait ofNigerians that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving, and across social strata, dealing in every kind of change. Here are stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch.Happiness, Like Waterintroduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination. "Intricate, graceful prose propels Okparanta's profoundly moving and illuminating book. I devoured these stories and immediately wanted more. This is an arrival."--NoViolet Bulawayo "Okparanta's prose is tender, beautiful and evocative. These powerful stories of contemporary Nigeria are told with compassion and a certain sense of humor. What a remarkable new talent."--Chika Unigwe "A haunting and startlingly original collection of short stories about the lives of Nigerians both at home and in America.Happiness, Like Water is a deeply affecting literary debut, the work of a sure and gifted new writer."--Julie Otsuka
Anything Is Possible
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this new work of fiction by #1 bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother's happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author's celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence. Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout's place as one of America's most respected and cherished authors. Praise for Anything Is Possible "When Elizabeth Strout is on her game, is there anybody better? . . . This is a generous, wry book about everyday lives, and Strout crawls so far inside her characters you feel you inhabit them. . . . This is a book that earns its title. Try reading it without tears, or wonder."--USA Today (four stars) "Readers who loved My Name Is Lucy Barton . . . are in for a real treat. . . . Strout is a master of the story cycle form. . . . She paints cumulative portraits of the heartache and soul of small-town America by giving each of her characters a turn under her sympathetic spotlight."--NPR "These stories return Strout to the core of what she does more magnanimously than anyone else, which is to render quiet portraits of the indignities and disappointments of normal life, and the moments of grace and kindness we are gifted in response. . . . Strout hits the target yet again."--The Washington Post "In this wise and accomplished book, pain and healing exist in perpetual dependence, like feuding siblings."--The Wall Street Journal "Anything Is Possible confirms Strout as one of our most grace-filled, and graceful, writers."--The Boston Globe "In Elizabeth Strout's Anything Is Possible, her stunning follow-up to My Name Is Lucy Barton, a famous author returns to the Midwestern hometown of her childhood, touching off a daisy-chain of stories narrated by those who knew her--memories of trauma and goodwill, resentments small and large, and the ever-widening gulf between haves and have-nots. Strout, always good, just keeps getting better."--Vogue "If you miss the charmingly eccentric and completely relatable characters from Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout's best-selling My Name Is Lucy Barton, you'll be happily reunited with them in Strout's smart and soulful Anything Is Possible."--Elle "Strout pierces the inner worlds of these characters' most private behaviors, illuminating the emotional conflicts and pure joy of being human, of finding oneself in the search for the American dream."--NYLON
Anna Karenina
A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval. Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs entirely to the woman whose name it bears, whose portrait is one of the truest ever made by a writer. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude.
The Giver
The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. Lois Lowry has written three companion novels toThe Giver,includingGathering Blue, Messenger, andSon.
Annotated Christmas Carol
What would Christmas be without A Christmas Carol? Charles Dickens's famous ghost story is as much a part of the season as plum pudding and mistletoe, and Michael Patrick Hearn, the celebrated annotator of The Wizard of Oz and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has now prepared a sumptuous new edition of the Dickens classic. This latest contribution to the Norton annotated series delves into the engrossing history of the book's publication, when it first captivated Victorian England. This is the first edition to combine the original text of 1843 with Dickens's Public Reading text, which had its world premiere in America in 1867 and has not been reprinted in nearly a century. Also included are rare photographs as well as the original Leech wood engravings and hand-colored etchings. These are supplemented by other contemporary illustrations by George Cruikshank, Gustave Dor? John Tenniel, and "Phiz." The Annotated Christmas Carol will be a literary feast for the whole family for generations.
The Alchemist
"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky." Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams." Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has already established itself as a modern classic, universally admired. Paulo Coelho's charming fable, now available in English for the first time, will enchant and inspire an even wider audience of readers for generations to come. The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist. The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams.
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved classic tells the story of Mary Lennox, a spoiled orphan who leaves India to live with her cold uncle in his dreary mansion in England. When Mary hears of a secret garden kept locked for ten years, she is determined to find it and tend it back to life. With the help of her uncle's sickly son and a boy who knows all about nature, Mary secretly transforms the garden - and all of their lives.
Life of Pi
Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true? Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [75th Anniversary Ed]
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick A special 75th anniversary edition of the beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family's erratic and eccentric behavior--such as her father Johnny's taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy's habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce--no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans' life lacked drama. By turns overwhelming, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the Nolans' daily experiences are raw with honestly and tenderly threaded with family connectedness. Betty Smith has, in the pages of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, captured the joys of humble Williamsburg life--from "junk day" on Saturdays, when the children traded their weekly take for pennies, to the special excitement of holidays, bringing cause for celebration and revelry. Smith has created a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as deeply resonant moments of universal experience. Here is an American classic that "cuts right to the heart of life," hails the New York Times. "If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you will deny yourself a rich experience."
Jane Eyre
Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead and subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. She takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, falls in love with Mr. Rochester, and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a richer life than that traditionally allowed women in Victorian society. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Michael Mason