books as comfort food

here's a whole new kind of personal coolness you never knew i had. last week, with the winter doldrums weighing heavy, i was rearranging an old stack of detective fiction which ben had cheerfully disrupted (he messes up my bookshelves with great drive and dedication). i picked up a morbid taste for bones, the first in the brother cadfael series. i bought it ages ago. probably in high school. (other teens watched 90210, i watched mystery! on pbs and got hooked on the brother cadfael mysteries. i was a paragon of cool.) i read it. i loved it. it's not quite my dad's pulp fiction (not dan brown, in other words), but almost. monks, murder, blood, etc. i was never going to admit reading it publicly, until i saw the blog post linked below and had an explanation for the book. comfort reading.

slate.com features a terrific blog called the happiness project, in which the blogger tries various tips for happiness (think features in o magazine, self-help books, etc.) and writes a snappy assessment of their effectiveness. the most recent blog post is about how people self-medicate with books. so great, i had to post a link. and confess.