I’m back from a church event in Sterling, VA and – when I’m doing a work trip 
with lots of ideas swirling around – I usually buy the current issue of The Harvard Business Review. It’s not the kind of journal I read regularly, but there’s something about stepping away from my usual context that inspires me to read something apart from my usual context as well. The January-February 2012 issue features several articles about Happiness.
I absorbed and highlighted chunks of this issue like I was reading the latest Rob Bell book. And there’s probably more in this HBR issue for church leaders than even Rob Bell might offer in one of his books. And I’m not at all talking about treat-your-church-like-a-business articles – which I usually disagree with.
So on this Valentines week of many (eye-rolling) Happily Ever After stories, I’d like to have some conversations on Happiness. Reading the Harvard Business Review on a plane makes me happy.
What kind of reading (and where) makes you happy?
A Church for Starving Artists 
Every night for decades I have spent the last 10-20 minutes (sometimes more) of my day reading in bed – almost exclusively sci-fi and fantasy.
It’s like a hot tub for my mind.
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Any good writing with a strong narrative thread (fiction or non-fiction) will make me happy whether I read in bed at night, on a train or plane, while sitting waiting for an appointment, or when I set the timer because I have fifteen extra minutes before I have to be somewhere. Reading good books or publications takes me so many wonderful places that I’m happy to read wherever I am. Read Mark Richard’s “House of Prayer No. 2” for a great example of a powerful memoir that you could read anywhere.
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Late to the thread, but reading is such an important part of my life, I felt moved to comment.
Reading that makes me happy? Good stories containing adventure, mystery, good vs. evil, humor, and make me think. Something that sucks me in and I can read for hours on end until I either finish the book or fall asleep. Some books in which I have found these qualities:
The Harry Potter series
The Dresden Files series (a series about a private investigator in Chicago who is a wizard, and advertises as such. It’s like the old hard-boiled PI novels mixed with fantasy; junk food for the brain)
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Screwtape Letters
The Narnia series
School forced me to read a lot of scholarly articles, and I have only recently been able to read for pleasure again (thank God for audio books…makes commuting so much more pleasurable!). As for where I love to read? Anywhere is wonderful, but at home with family is best.
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