In the library I was handed a blueprint on how to live the mysterious, unnamable, big dream life I wanted. I was handed books. And through reading them, I grew up to find that very life.
The only language she could speak was grief. How could he not know that? Instead, she said, “I love you.” She did. She loved him. But even that didn’t feel like anything anymore.
In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family – my brother at 30, my daughter at 5.
Could a writer understand how her book had saved someone long ago, when the world was a fragile, scary place and the people she loved weren’t in it anymore? Could a writer understand that her book had mattered more than anything?
It mattered most to me then because of where I was in my life. So in a way, there isn’t just one book that matters most, there might be several, or even a dozen.
When you read a book, and who you are when you read it, makes it matter or not.
The idea of the book that matters most,” Kiki said. “Because i think it’s like impossible to pick such a book. When you read a book, and who you are when you read it, makes it matter or not. Like if you’re unhappy and you read, I don’t know, On the Road or The Three Musketeers, and that book changes how you fell or how you think, then it matters the most. At that time.
I see you in the library. The way you love the books.
She was always kind of sad, even when she smiled.
She imagined books and this book group getting her through whatever was coming next.
Sometimes we pray for help in accepting what comes our way. That takes a bit of magic, too” -George.
She took the first tentative, terrifying, exhilarating steps into her future.
Darling, the psalm tells us that we must walk through the valley. we cannot walk around it, I’m afraid.
Still, he loved her. She knew that. He loved her the best way he could. But she wasn’t sure that was enough anymore.
I don’t know what I want or what I feel. I thought I wanted this. Us. But now I’m not so sure.
I believe that, magically, the book we are supposed to read somehow appears in our hands at just the right time.
Italo Calvino quote, ‘A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.’ For I have read The Great Gatsby numerous times, and always discover new things in each reading.
He liked the right before part of things, when it was impossible to be disappointed.
Oddly, our mall had a small movie theater that showed foreign and independent films. I loved going there, loved how what I saw often confused or embarrassed me, how the movies there made me think in ways that only books did.
My first trip to New York City, when I was seven, was a world wind of Macy’s, the Empire State building, and club sandwiches at a diner. On a whim, my parents took us there for the day, and my strongest memory is a revolving doors. It seemed to me than that to enter anywhere in Manhattan, you had to step into one and spin.