How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood

miss how Harriet was forever showing us how to read. How to look for shapes and layers. How to see that stories have a

“meanwhile”—an important thing that’s happening while the rest of the story moves along. Three bears strolling in the forest: story. Goldilocks wrecking their house: meanwhile. Heartbroken Cinderella sweeping and scrubbing: story. Handsome prince searching far and wide: meanwhile.

“Apologies require acceptance, so I thank you,” he says, nudging the bookends back into my lap. “But as I understand it, forgiveness flows in one direction only.”

“The problem with retrospect is it never shows up beforehand.”

“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

You can write a love poem to a place. To an object. To a feeling.”

Summer light melted through the windows as they settled over their pages. Harriet listened for a moment to the thrilling shush of pen on paper, the sound of escape.

To love is to find your own soul Through the soul of the beloved one.

I used to race through books one after another, but in Book Club Harriet taught us that when you slow down, you notice more, and when you notice more, you feel more.

Reading one book makes it part of all the books you’ve ever read,

“The writer writes the words. The given reader reads the words. And the book, the unique and unrepeatable book, doesn’t exist until the given reader meets the writer on the page.”

“We are the given reader,” I tell him. “We decide what’s the story and what’s the meanwhile.”

Meanwhile, I was loved.