Reading helps keep me sane. As sane as I get, anyways.

My favorites are anything by Stephen R. Donaldson, or Dennis L. McKiernan's Mithgar series, especially The Eye of the Hunter and Silver Wolf, Black Falcon. The latter two contain Cursed Ones, a concept that I truly find fascinating for the thought he's put into it. Most people who write shapeshifters make it too easy, but not McKiernan:

...but the Bear was not a Man in the shape of a Bear, but a Bear wild and untameable, a Bear who sometimes had thoughts similar to those of a Man, perhaps even a Man named Urus. The danger always existed that the Man might never again become the Bear, and that the Bear might never again become a Man. The Man, Urus, was aware of this danger. The Bear, however, was not.

(Paraphrased, of course; I've very recently finished re-reading Eye and Silver Wolf, so I don't exactly have my books on me at the moment)