Tuesday, July 10, 2012

"I like that library books had secret lives."


Join me on my writing journey each week as I post to the Tuesday Slice of Life sponsored by Stacey and Ruth from 

I'm currently reading a great epistolary novel, Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani.    Epistolary is a new term I learned this last year for novels that are written as letters between characters.  Several of my favorite adult books are epistolary novels - 84 Charing Cross Road, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and A Woman of Independent Means.

I wanted to share these golden lines written by Meena, one of the characters in Same Sun Here:
"I have finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the third time.  It taught me a lot, and I cried all over its pages because it was so real.  When I returned the book to the library, I thought about how maybe someone else will cry over it, too.  I like that library books have secret lives.  All those hands that have held them.  All those eyes that have read them."

I think this might be why I've always loved libraries, library book sales, and used book stores.  It's nice to think that a book has been loved and handled and even cried over by many.

I can quickly recall a few titles that made me cry - Summer of the Monkeys, The Liberation of Gabriel King (I cry every year when I read it to my students), Number the Stars, Out of the Dust, and The Book Thief.  How about it?  What books made you cry?

3 comments:

  1. Most recently, Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Jacobson. I also have read and cried with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn multiple times- the first when I was in high school (let's don't talk about how long ago that was!)and again this last year when I got it on my Kindle. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Wonder by R.J. Palacio. Where the Lilies Bloom by Vera and Bill Cleaver- another I have read multiple times and it always makes me cry, partly tears from laughing so hard but also sad tears. Currently reading The Book Thief. When I started thinking about it, I realized there are a lot of books on this list for me! You named a couple I haven't read. Thanks. I love a good cry.

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  2. Thank you for sharing those "golden lines." I have "welled up" with many books but I confess I cried uncontrollably when I read The Notebook, long ago. And of course, Where the Red Fern Grows.

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  3. Patricia Pollaco's Pink and Say. This is the hand that touched the hand that touched the hand....

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