Thursday, August 4, 2011

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch

This is what I'm reading now (I'm reading three books including an audio book).  I bought it when Roger and I were in San Francisco for my birthday.  We had just been to the deYoung to see the Picasso exhibit and we went to North Beach for a fabulous Italian lunch.  We visited City Lights Bookstore and I found this and another about the love of reading.

This book inspired this blog. I am good at book talking.  Why not start practicing my book review/talking skills with my own reading.

The author reads one book per day for a year.  I cannot come anywhere near that rate of reading. She weaves her account of the healing power of books with a memoir of growing up in an immigrant family with two sisters. Her account of the death of her sister is heartbreaking. She began her year of reading as a way of stepping back into life two years after the death of her sister. She had been running so hard from her sister's hospital room she realized that she needed to slow down and really sit in her grief to truly live. Books had been such an important connection in her family. Turning to books was a natural way for her to slow down and feel.

Personally I wonder if one book a day is really slowing down but I'll see as I continue reading the book.

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