everything

"Quick Read" -

promised the book cover. the book's name: The Book Boy. written by Joanna Trollope. 94 pages in 16pt print. a book that easily can be read during one afternoon. that is, if you can read.

for that's what the book is about: it tells the story of Alice. who can't.

"I can't - " Alice stopped again, and took a deep breath.
"I can't - read very well."
Mrs Chandra looked amazed. "What has that got to do with anything?"
"Everything," Alice said. "Everything. It makes me - different."

everything. no ABC. and fitting that i returned to A this week in the library. yes, i am still reading alphabetically. S, it is right now. but when i walked past the A-shelf, i saw that it carries ne books. one of it, Mitch Albom. For One More Day. the most beautiful passage of this book are the letters a mother slips into the pockets of her son. so that he carries her words with him when he is without her, in a new place. like at his first day at school.

I waved good-bye with the letter. It didn't occur to her, I guess, that I was just starting school and didn't know how to read. That was my mother. It was the thought that counted.

and then - S. a library book about a library. Ian Sansom. The mobile library. with a note that i wished would have been story-length.

I write because I read, and I read because I write, the two being pretty much inseparable in my mind. I don't know which came first, the reading or the writing, but I do know that I started reading because of libraries. .. The great truth and beauty of a public library is that you don't own the books: they, briefly, own you.

reading and writing. and libraries. touching, too, to meet books in the library that, briefly, have owned you already.