How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood

She thumbed briskly through it, the type of reader who tortured the pages.

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

“These birds communicate. They think. They count. They solve. They decide. Most significantly, they say what they mean, and mean what they say; a skill with which human animals struggle profoundly.”

“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.”

“You’re not a terrible person, Violet. You’re a good person learning a terrible lesson.”