Books Like The Book of Joy
Some books are best read alone in a quiet room; some are best read in company. The Book of Joy is both. It is the record of a remarkable week in 2015, when two of the most beloved spiritual leaders in the world - the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu - met in Dharamsala, India, to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s eightieth birthday and to talk about the thing they both know more about than almost anyone: joy.
Neither man has had an easy life. The Dalai Lama lost his country; Tutu lived through apartheid. And yet both radiate a joy that is unmistakably real. The book, written by Douglas Abrams, distills their conversations into a series of daily topics - perspective, humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion - each paired with practices the reader can try. It is a book about how to be happy in a world that gives you plenty of reasons not to be. If that is what you are looking for, the books below are its natural companions.
The Unlikely Friendship at the Center of the Book
The first thing readers notice about The Book of Joy is the friendship. The Dalai Lama and Tutu tease each other mercilessly, finish each other’s sentences, and treat each other with a warmth that is genuinely moving. Their friendship is not incidental to the book’s message; it is the message. Joy, the book argues, is not a private achievement but a relational one - it grows in the soil of friendship, laughter and mutual care.
The book is also strikingly practical. Each chapter ends with “The Practice,” a concrete exercise - a meditation, a journaling prompt, a way of reframing a difficulty. This is what separates it from most books on happiness: it does not just tell you that joy is possible; it shows you how to practice it, the way you would practice an instrument. Readers who do the practices report that the book changes their daily lives, not just their understanding.
The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler
The Dalai Lama’s earlier collaboration with psychiatrist Howard Cutler is the direct predecessor of The Book of Joy, and it covers similar ground: the nature of happiness, the role of suffering, the practices of compassion and mindfulness. Cutler’s role is important - he asks the Dalai Lama the skeptical, Western questions that readers are thinking, and the back-and-forth between Buddhist wisdom and modern psychology is one of the book’s great pleasures.
Where The Book of Joy is structured around a conversation between two friends, The Art of Happiness is structured around a dialogue between two worldviews - ancient contemplative practice and contemporary science. It is more systematic and covers more ground, and readers who finished The Book of Joy wanting more of the Dalai Lama’s thought will find it here in abundance.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist who survived the Nazi death camps, and this book - part memoir, part theory - is his account of what kept him and others alive. His conclusion was that the prisoners who survived were those who could find meaning in their suffering: a task to complete, a person to return to, a belief to hold onto. From this he built logotherapy, a school of psychology organized around the human need for meaning.
This is the foundational text behind everything The Book of Joy says about suffering. Where the Dalai Lama and Tutu offer practices for finding joy, Frankl offers the stark, hard-won argument for why it is possible at all: because human beings can endure almost any how if they have a why. It is a short book, and every sentence carries weight. For readers who want the deep roots of the joy conversation, this is where they begin.
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist, and this book is his attempt to answer an ancient question with modern science: what actually makes people happy? He draws on the great wisdom traditions - Buddhism, Stoicism, Confucianism, the Bible - and tests their claims against decades of psychological research, arriving at a picture of happiness that is neither purely ancient nor purely modern.
The kinship with The Book of Joy is real: both books take the old wisdom seriously and connect it to what we know about how the mind actually works. Haidt is more analytical and less devotional than the Dalai Lama and Tutu, but his conclusions are remarkably similar - relationships, gratitude, meaningful work and the practice of attention are the building blocks of a good life. For readers who want the evidence behind the practices, this is the book.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle’s book is a worldwide phenomenon, and its message is simple to state and hard to practice: the only moment that exists is now, and most human suffering comes from living in the past or the future instead of the present. Through a series of teachings and exercises, Tolle guides readers toward a way of being that is alert, accepting and free of the constant chatter of the mind.
The connection to The Book of Joy is the shared emphasis on presence. The Dalai Lama and Tutu’s joy practices are largely practices of attention - noticing, appreciating, being here now - and Tolle’s book is the most radical working-out of that idea. It is more abstract and more demanding than The Book of Joy, and some readers find its tone off-putting, but for those who connect with it, it is transformative.
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
Ross Gay is a poet, and this book is his record of a year-long project: writing one essay a day about a delight he noticed. The delights are small - a dandelion, a stranger’s kindness, a good stretch, the way light falls on a sidewalk - and the essays are short, funny and full of attention.
This is the most literary book on this list, and it is the perfect counterweight to the more systematic books. Where the Dalai Lama and Tutu teach joy as a practice, Gay simply demonstrates it: a year of paying attention, written down, becomes an argument that joy is available every day to anyone who looks. It shares The Book of Joy’s belief that joy is not the absence of pain but a way of meeting it, and it will make you want to start your own delight journal immediately.
Joy as a Practice, Not a Feeling
One of the most important ideas in The Book of Joy is the distinction between pleasure and joy. Pleasure is the feeling you get from something good happening; joy is deeper and more durable, and it can coexist with suffering. The Dalai Lama and Tutu are living proof: two men who have known enormous suffering, and who have chosen, daily, to practice gratitude, humor and compassion until those became their default way of being.
That distinction is liberating. It means joy is not something you wait for or deserve; it is something you practice, like playing scales or learning a language. And the research agrees: studies of gratitude, mindfulness and kindness consistently show that these practices measurably increase well-being. The science and the wisdom traditions, for once, are saying the same thing.
If you want to read more about how families practice these things together, our guide to family-friendly family healing explores how households can grow through hard times, and our collection of the most meaningful books about responsibility at home looks at the daily work of caring for each other. The relationships section is full of books in this spirit.
The Book of Joy in Daily Life
What makes The Book of Joy different from most inspirational books is that it is designed to be used, not just read. Each chapter’s practice - a gratitude exercise, a compassion meditation, a way of reframing a complaint - is something you can do in minutes, and the book explicitly invites you to build these practices into your days. Readers who do report a real shift: the practices train attention, and attention is where joy lives.
The book also works as a family read. The Dalai Lama and Tutu’s friendship models something children and adults can both learn from - how to disagree warmly, how to laugh at yourself, how to take suffering seriously without being defeated by it. Reading a chapter aloud and trying the practice together is a lovely way to bring the book’s lessons into a household, and it turns the book from an individual exercise into a shared one. If you want joy to be a family practice rather than a private one, this is the way to use it.
The Eight Pillars of Joy
For readers who like structure, The Book of Joy offers one: the authors identify eight pillars that support a joyful life - perspective, humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion and generosity. Each pillar gets its own section of the conversation, and each is grounded in both spiritual tradition and the two men’s lived experience. It is a framework you can return to, and it gives the book a usefulness beyond the pleasure of reading it.
What makes the framework feel true rather than formulaic is the way the Dalai Lama and Tutu embody the pillars as they discuss them. They laugh at themselves (humor), they acknowledge their own failures (humility), they practice gratitude for the smallest kindnesses. The book does not just describe joy; it demonstrates it, and the demonstration is the most persuasive part of the argument.
Choosing Your Next Read
If you want more of the Dalai Lama’s thought, start with The Art of Happiness. If you want the philosophical roots of the joy conversation, Man’s Search for Meaning is essential. If you want the science, The Happiness Hypothesis will satisfy your curiosity. If you want a daily demonstration of joy rather than a theory of it, The Book of Delights is a pure pleasure.
Conclusion
The Book of Joy is a record of two extraordinary men doing an ordinary thing - choosing joy, day after day, in a world full of reasons not to. It is a book that makes happiness feel possible without making it feel cheap, and it offers practices rather than platitudes. The books gathered here come at the same questions from different directions - psychology, philosophy, poetry, spiritual tradition - and together they form a library of joy. Pick the one that calls to you, and begin the practice.
