<p>You know, I wrote to the guy who wrote Stumbling on Happiness. He sent back a really nice reply. :) But then got sick of me when I sent him a second email detailing my many self-experiments with cognitive science haha.</p>
<p>I think Mitch Albom is the sort you either love or hate. I found his stuff really emotionally manipulative, but I know a lot of people who love it. <em>shrug</em></p>
<p>Zola rocks -- but don't worry if you don't get into it at first. Abbe Mouret's Transgression starts really slow. Also, it's pretty hard to find a hard copy of his stuff in English, so you would either want to 1) order it in French from French Amazon if you speak French or 2) find it in English online.</p>
<p>I kept sending my best friend literary spam while I was reading Transgression. Quotes 'n things. Lemme share a few:</p>
<p>"So he left her at the end of the garden, sitting in the sunlight on the ground before a hive, whence the bees buzzed like golden berries round her neck, along her bare arms and in her hair, without thought of stinging her."</p>
<p>"'I should like to be a child once more. I should like to be always a child, walking in the shadow of your gown. When I was quite little, I clasped my hands when I uttered the name of Mary. My cradle was white, my body was white, my every thought was white."</p>
<p>And here are a few things I said to my friend at the time:</p>
<p>"I think Abbe Mouret's Transgression is possibly one of my favorite books I've ever read. I mean, I can't tell yet since I haven't finished it, but it's delightful. And it's fascinating. Serge's fascination with Mary... and then the entire relationship, whatever it really is, between Serge and Albine... as if two children... it's really beyond me to describe how lovely and grave and colorful and intoxicating it is. </p>
<p>there's a moment in the story -- i've lost it now, it was several pages ago -- where serge and albine miss each other's mouths, kiss each other's cheeks, merely hold each other and play at being lovers without knowing quite what it's about. to love without knowing how to fully express it... they are wandering around the paradou looking for a forbidden tree, and there is nobody but them, and it echoes eden and ignorance and the joy of all of that. "</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>"it's rather like a fairy tale, very intoxicating and aesthetic, which is interesting since i found it rather boring when i started it." </p>
<p>*</p>
<p>"all through the descriptions of the paradou, the gardens, the wilderness of gardens grown over with years, the text starts feeling like a maze. i am lost in it and if you asked me to find a place i had been, a phrase i found beautiful, i couldn't point to it. the very thought of finding any one thing again makes me feel like a person who has realized the sky is fading and it's been hours since i departed from the path. it's perfectperfectperfectperfect"</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>"i'd sell a limb just to write one sentence like those above"</p>
<p>(I'm Zola's self-appointed PR lady, apparently...)</p>