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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Anne Bogel
Read between
May 1 - May 17, 2025
I choose what to read based on a whim and friends’ recommendations, by publication date and library due date. I don’t carefully plan exactly what I’m going to read next, and in what order. I may walk into a bookstore and leave with my next read at the emphatic urging of an excited bookseller, even if I didn’t know that book existed an hour before. Maybe three unrelated people recommend the same book to me in the course of a week, and I decide to take the hint. Maybe my kids tell me I have to read a certain title, or for reasons I can’t articulate, I decide it’s finally time to pull one of
...more
Never
ALready picked
As a devoted reader, I lovingly give countless hours to finding the right books for me. I don’t think those hours are wasted; part of the fun of reading is planning the reading. But I’ve learned that sometimes, despite my best efforts, a book unexpectedly finds me and not the other way around.
Can every devoted reader point back to the book that hooked them on the story? I’d like to think so. Not a book they appreciate, or grudgingly respect, but the one that captivated them, the one they didn’t want to put down, the one that made them decide, for themselves, to make reading a part of their life, forever.
This shelf initially held only books written by true friends, the dozen or two fellow authors she personally knew, and knew well. Because friends and family sounded much nicer to her ear, she tacked on the family—and reassured herself that some of her friends were dear enough to feel like kin. Since then, her son has written a slim volume of poetry that now graces her shelf, making the moniker both emotionally and technically accurate.
“So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
if my real life reminds me of something I read in a book, I’m reading well—and I’m probably living well, too.
Buy books you don’t like and will never read because they are beautiful:
Just as I’m all the ages I have been, I’m all the readers I have been.
Duke Ellington, the jazz great who famously quipped, “I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.”
Thousands of years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
Same for re reading books
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
The first time I read a book, I immerse myself in the story. I’m not concerned with catching every nuance; if it’s truly a good book, I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. The first time, I want to find out what happens. Who are these people in the pages, what do they want, why do they matter? On my first pass, I’m figuring it all out. On the second pass, the experience is qualitatively different.
A good book, when we return to it, will always have something new to say. It’s not the same book, and we’re not the same reader.
“Your father grew up visiting the bookstore. I grew up visiting the library. We haven’t really changed.”
“You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?”
We are readers. Books grace our shelves and fill our homes with beauty; they dwell in our minds and occupy our thoughts. Books prompt us to spend pleasant hours alone and connect us with fellow readers. They invite us to escape into their pages for an afternoon, and they inspire us to reimagine our lives.
