Good Books but Bad Moods

I really need to choose my Audiobooks better. Its not that what I have "read" via audiobook lately has been bad, the problem is that it is becoming more and more clear that the audiobook in my car significantly impacts my mood. Before we bought the Chrysler 300C, when I was driving my old POS Mercury Tracer, I listed to Harry Potter on audio tape all of the time, and getting in the car was a treat that would generally raise my mood. Now, with no tape player my tapes are useless and I have been "expanding my horizons" so to speak and getting a variety of books on CD from the library - pretty much anything that is on my reading list that is readily available in audiobook. Since we got the Chrysler I have listened to Blindness by Jose Saramongo, The Fairy-Tale Detectives, and am currently listening to The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Blindness is an incredibly depressing book and this was reflected in my mood frequently in the two weeks I listened to it. The Fairy-Tale Detectives was sort of neutral - it was a children's book, and not to serious, but it did nothing to cheer me either. This morning is a textbook example of why I need to be more careful though. The Plot Against America is an alternative history. That means the author changes something about a key point in history and writes a book about what could have happened (fictional, clearly). In The Plot Against America, instead of Roosevelt winning a third term in the run-up to WWII, Charles Lindbergh (yes, the pilot), who was a known isolationist and anti-semite, runs and wins the presidency. The book follows a Jewish family from NJ. In the section I listened to on the way to work this morning they were visiting Washington DC and were victims of multiple acts of anti-semitism. When I left the house I was in a decent mood, ready to face the day, thinking about not much and looking forward to Trivia tonight. After ten minutes with the book, I arrived at work angry and stressed, pissed at the world, and brooding over how people are so rotten to each other.

I think its time to switch audiobooks and finish reading The Plot Against America in book form. Actually a reading a book also affects my mood, but not nearly as much as the audiobooks, I think mainly because they are not interwoven through my day as much. The next audiobook I have is The Lightning Thief, which, as it is constantly compared to Harry Potter, seems like a safe bet.