The Echo of Old Books

by Barbara Davis

Books were safe. They had plots that followed predictable patterns, beginnings, middles, and endings. Usually happy, though not always. But if something tragic happened in a book, you could just close it and choose a new one, unlike real life, where events often played out without the protagonist’s consent.

We read not to escape life but to learn how to live it more deeply and richly, to experience the world through the eyes of the other.

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.”

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.”