Why Read?

Love this quote from Kafka:

If the book we are reading does not wake us like a blow of a fist on the skull, why do we read the book? So that it shall make us happy, as you tell me? My God, we would be happy even if we had no books, and such books that make us happy we could write ourselves if need be. But what we need are books that affect us like ill-fortune causing pain, like the death of someone we loved more that ourselves, like being exiled in a deep forest away from all men, like a suicide; a book must be an axe to break the frozen sea in us. This I believe.

- Briefe 1902 - 1924

That's why Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by that pained soul Dostoevsky are going to be my next reads. If my current read Dracula doesn't scare me to death before that, that is.