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Sense and Sensibility’s Marianne Dashwood would not have sulked in her soup about being boyfriend-less. Miss Nelson wouldn’t have gone missing again due to an ice cream hangover from her single lady pity party. Neither would Viola Swamp. And fair Rosalind from As You Like It would have dressed up like a man and found her fellow and . . . well, anyway . . . the library.
bought you a new book two weeks ago. If you can’t show any self-restraint and you’re going to read them that quickly, you’re going to have to check them out of the library.” I goggled at her words. First of all, was she really reprimanding her daughter for reading too quickly? Second of all, did she have any idea of the burning urgency of reading for a book-loving child, how two weeks was a complete eternity without a new book to dive into?
Jellybeans for Breakfast.”
Miss Nelson Is Missing! Madeline, of course. And eventually, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. The Anne of Green Gables series. And so many Judy Blume books.” Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle! The funny British lady who always found the perfect way to get kids to do the right thing. Like Mary Poppins crossed with Mrs. Doubtfire. I sighed with contentment.
He’s . . . Dodie, I swear every day he does something that makes me think, That’s why I married him.”
First I read them Oh! A hush fell over them as they looked at the soft colors and listened to the quiet rhymes about the animals in the snow. “And this one’s called The Snowy Day.”
I went and pulled Blubber off the shelf. I didn’t know what to write on the back of one of my homemade bookmarks. Sometimes, I would write why I chose the book for that reader, hoping to nudge them into considering the lessons they might find inside. I thought about putting, “One good friend is worth dozens of silly people,” but that sounded patronizing. Instead, on the back of the bookmark, cut from Van Gogh’s Poppies and Butterflies painting, I wrote, “Cindy Crawford, Bill Clinton, and Jessica Simpson were all bullied as children.”
“Here, read this little Maya Angelou book called Mother. It’s so powerful. And I’m sure your mother misses you. You’ve probably both changed since that fight three years ago. Would you give her another chance?”
someone had accidentally shelved Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies in the bins of books for young readers,
“The Stephen Colbert one.” Kendra was intentionally avoiding its title. The book had come out in October, but I still broke into hysterical giggles every time I saw it or even thought about it. “You mean I Am America (and So Can You!)?”
“What did you think of that one?” I asked Shep when he came to return Romain Gary’s The Promise of Dawn a week later.
Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist and His Master right at my fingertips. “You’ll love this one if you liked Don Quixote,” I promised. “Almost as absurd and even more witty. It’s by a French philosopher who was one of the founders of the first encyclopedia.”
“You know, it’s funny. All anyone ever talks about is the madeleine,” Lula observed at the first session of our Foodie Book Club. “Personally, I’m more of a chocolate person, so the whole vanilla cakey thing never really did it for me. But beyond that, it’s really more about the tea Marcel dips it in. Tilleul, which people usually translate as lime blossom tea. But it’s not the same tree that grows the lime we’re used to, is it, Dodie?” She looked to me for confirmation. My smile widened. I loved linden flower tea. In cafés all over Paris, you could order an infusion de tilleul—literally only
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It was a book written by Alexandre Dumas fils, and it had never been even as remotely famous as any of his father’s work like The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo. The story had served as the basis for La Traviata, one of the most popular operas of all time—and the one Maddie had just teased me about since I had dragged her to it two out of the ten times I had seen it at the Met. And yet the book had remained almost unknown—rarely translated and hard to find in the United States. It was The Lady of the Camellias.
“Here you go.” I handed him Bleak House instead. I had saved Dickens until I knew his tastes pretty well; Esther Summerson was one of my all-time favorite characters—and, I secretly admitted to myself, the book was nice and long.
Well, the best I’d come up with for keeping him away had actually been Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, at a shorter but far denser 720 pages, but I wasn’t sure a novel about a tuberculosis sanatorium would leave the door open for future romance if he were ever single again.
“I don’t have these here,” I said. “Except I just finished reading this one, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and it’s on my nightstand. It will make you laugh, and it will break your heart. I don’t usually do this, but I could lend you my own copy if you promise to take good care of it.”
He reminded me of Gabriel Oak from Far from the Madding Crowd—overlooked by Bathsheba Everdene in favor of the dashing, selfish Frank Troy.
Then I gave him his halfiversary present: the copy of The Lady of the Camellias I had bought with Maddie before Shep and I even got together. “This is my favorite book.”
I threw on a dress and headed into the library. The book I wanted was The Crimson Petal and the White. I reread the scenes I was looking for, scenes in which the heroine of the story cares for a little girl who is not her own.
A copy of Merry Hall. The note card tucked inside read MACKIE O’REILLY. Someone knew that Mackie wanted to take up gardening now that Terabithia was gone. And this book, with its hilarious, lovably cranky narrator and his quirky little British town and his grumpy, excellent gardener would be a perfect distraction
