How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood

I feel the way I always feel in Book Club. The way I believe we all feel. Safe.

Guess what was Sophie’s favorite question—her life, despite the scar of tragedy, was a perpetual looking forward.

“Books won’t solve my problems, Harriet.” “No, but they give your problems perspective. They allow your problems to breathe.”

The line between this and that, you and her, us and them, the line is thin.

“Perhaps it’s an oddity of human nature to judge women more harshly. Or maybe we expect so little of men, their transgressions don’t register the same.”

I took a life. I lived and died. Meanwhile, I was loved.