How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood

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

We are a continuum of human experience, neither the worst nor the best thing we have ever done. Or, more exactly, we are both the best thing and the worst thing we’ve ever done. We are all of it, all at once, all the time.

“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 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.”