The Echo of Old Books

by Barbara Davis

“Books are like people, Ashlyn. They absorb what’s in the air around them. Smoke. Grease. Mold spores. Why not feelings? They’re as real as all those other things. There’s nothing more personal than a book, especially one that’s become an important part of someone’s life.”

“They exist to make us feel. To connect us to what’s inside, sometimes to things we don’t even know are there. It only makes sense that some of what we feel when we’re reading would . . . rub off.”

all truly good writing—fiction or nonfiction—has a heartbeat, a life force that comes from the writer, like an invisible cord connecting them to the reader. Without it, the work is dead on arrival.”