Another great joy is really appreciating great worlds created by other authors when you read them. With the recent sad death of Sir Terry Pratchett, there have been a spew of articles looking at his works, Discworld especially.
The range of his characters was amazing and the only other humorist writer I can think of who also invented several funny characters (and sold well with them all) was P.G. Wodehouse. His writing was under-estimated too. One of my big beefs has always been that funny writing is somehow seen as not quite "proper". That it is a kind of embarrassment to "proper literature".
Well if attitudes won't change, I fervently hope funny writing continues to be an embarrassment.