My jolly mood may also have something to do with Edith Wharton. I'm finishing The Custom of the Country, and I don't know why I keep reading, since I couldn't bear the suspense and looked up the plot on Wikipedia. But then, it's the same plot over and over: virtuous characters separated and then dead by the end of the book. Painful to read, though nothing was worse than watching Lily Bart's slow-motion descent. I'd started and abandoned House of Mirth a bunch of times, so that first impression of Lily, and her clear-eyed conversation with Seldin, is sort of graven into my mind. I don't reread books anymore, I'm not sure why, so the impressions tend not to run as deep as Lily's has.