The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

She doesn’t understand what it means to love books

so passionately that you would die without them, that you would simply stop breathing, stop existing.

so passionately that you would die without them, that you would simply stop breathing, stop existing.

I am nothing to her but an old lady. One’s reward for marching through the decades is a

But when you grow comfortable hiding within a protective shell, it’s harder than one might expect to stand up and say, “Actually, folks, this is who I am.”

He had taught her to love reading, one of the greatest gifts a parent could give a child, and in doing so, he had opened the world to her.