I was a very, very lucky kid, because, growing up, my dad read to me every single night before bed. We read everything from classics to fairy tales, from board books to chapter books, and everything in between. When he would travel for work, he would read the stories onto a tape, so I could listen to them at bedtime. It was great…
…Except this one night, when we got to the end of one particular book that shall remain nameless (because I can’t tell you the title without giving away the whole shebang), that had what most people might call a bittersweet ending.
For ten-year-old me, it wasn’t bittersweet. It was heartbreaking. Like, stay-up-for-an-hour-ugly-crying heartbreaking. As I noted yesterday, I don’t handle sad endings well at all, but at ten, I had no defenses at all to this kind of heartbreak, and so all I could do was cry on my poor father’s shoulder until I was too tired to be awake anymore….
After that, and for a while afterwards, my dad and I started reading Garfield comics before bed. We still got all the joys of reading together, and we got to laugh together, too–as we’ve noted, one of the most therapeutic, stress-reducing things the body can do. And there was no worries that I would have another ugly-crying session.
As I’ve mentioned before, I–and several readers I’ve met–won’t read books that make them cry, because some of us just don’t finding sad-crying cathartic. And that is absolutely your choice.
What I don’t mind, though, is books that make me happy-cry. Or giggle-cry. You know…those books that just make you smile so hard, or makes your heart flutter (metaphorically speaking) so much that tears just spring to your eyes. Those kind of books are much, much harder to find, but they are out there. And those kind of books are precisely, exactly what I need to make a gloomy day better. And since today is a pretty gloomy day out there…I figured I’d share some of my precious happy-cry books with you, in the hopes that it might brighten your day!
Follow My Lead: I’ve mentioned this book in posts before, but that is because it is just so much fun, and so touching, and so wonderfully unexpected that I want to hand out copies on street corners. The relationship between Winifred and Jason Cummings, Duke of Rayne on their trans-European roadtrip from Hell is one of my favorites in romance, because both of them, though they certainly have their issues, are, at heart, good and kind people who want the other to be happy. This results in some of the most touching interactions I can remember–particularly when Jason moves Heaven and Earth to get a souvenir for Win to remember her trip. It’s one of the smallest, silliest things, but it never fails to make me happy-cry just a little.
Mike Nelson’s Mind Over Matters: Mike Nelson was a head writer, and host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which I love. Perhaps a bit too much, it’s true, but that’s beside the point. Nelson also wrote a few books, one of which is this collection of essays on everything from Radio Shack to men’s fashions to tea, and back again. Each one is delightfully absurd, surprisingly insightful, and each have the same brilliant wit that made Mystery Science Theater 3000 such a total joy. This is definitely a giggle-cry book. It’s also a “scare people by guffawing in public while reading” book. But laughter is contagious, so maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all…
Carpe Jugulum: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series is just plain one of the most joyful, inspiring, funny, satirical, and wonderful things you can find, and Carpe Jugulum is my favorite book in this series, which is saying quite a good deal. It is a delightful blend of literary satire and homage, as the King of Discworld decides to invite a nearby vampire family, the Magpyrs, to his kingdom to celebrate the birth of his son. But the Maypyrs have spent years trying to fit into good society, exposing their children to sunlight and force-feeding them garlic with every meal…and they have no plans to go anywhere. On the other side of the castle walls, Granny Weatherwax has joined forced with a hapless local priest to force the vampires out, resulting in an adventure that is sarcastic and wonderful and so uproarious that I can’t avoid a little bit of giggle-happy-crying throughout this adventure.