Customer Reviews

Still Love in Strange Places

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A favorite quote from the book:

"Reading begins with the body, with settling in. Up, in the crook of a tree, or down, on the green grass below. On the floor beneath the ceiling fan, on the shore beside the receding sea, over a plate of clam linguini, in the bathtub, late at night. Reading begins with settling in, with the posture of surrender.

Even the youngest children understand the high art of surrender. They cede to a bedtime story just as they finally cede to sleep, floating on the raft of words they hear their parents read.

When we surrender to books we are made new. We are reinvented, we are fortified, we are blessed. New perspective seep into our politics and talk. Fresh sympathies arise. Raw memories are roused awake. Urgencies begin to clamor. Even our bodies change when we submit to books, when we allow ourselves to live them. Our hearts beat that much quicker or that much slower, our muscles lengthen our or tense, our stomachs turn, and just as suddenly, our stomachs grow pacified. Reading clams the anxious, heals the heartsick, distracts the oppressed, sustains the lonely. Reading is like singing. We can hardly live without it.

In this confused, tormented, dangerous, exotic and terrifyingly beautiful world, books exist for many reasons: to defend, to protect, to complain, to berate, to rule, to prove, to instruct, to insist. Books can be manifestos and they can be screeds. They can oppose and impose, they can boast and promote, they can offend. But so many books, so much of the time, are created most simply and also most thrillingly because writers dare to dream and because readers dare to let thme. Because history can be entered into and because fantasy can enthrall and because the personal can be made to speak for every one of us."