I have found that, when reading for pleasure, a good way to judge a book is by how much damage is done by the end. Some people can manage to read a book and leave it looking as clean and pristine as if it had never been touched—but I am not one of them. If a book is dog-eared, marked up, written in and highlighted, then you can be sure that something in the lines reached out and grabbed ahold of me, compelling me off my chair in search of the nearest writing utensil. Even better are those moments when I need to set the book down for a moment to think about what I just read. Every once in a while I find a combination of words so beautiful that I have to say them out loud to myself. Those are the moments I read for.
Last night I finished reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It was such a simple story, about a girl from a poor family who lives in Brooklyn in the early 1900s. Nothing overly extraordinary happens, but the language is beautiful and sentimental, and by the time I reached the last page I wished that I could go along with Francie a little bit longer, to follow her to college and see what she thought about it, and to find out if she ever married what’s-his-name.
But in the end we are only left with the words that impressed us, made us think or shaped what we believe in.
Here are a few of the passages from my latest read that got me up and about, searching for a pen…
“A day like this is like somebody giving you a present.” Ch 3
“Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman.” Ch 39
“The difference between rich and poor,” said Francie, “is that poor people do everything with their own hands and the rich hire hands to do things. We’re not poor any more. We can pay to have some things done for us.” “I want to stay poor, then,” said Katie, “because I like to use my hands.” Ch 45
“Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere—be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.” Ch 48
“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains—a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone—just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.” Ch 52
“The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.” Ch 55
Christmas Is All Around Us 
Love!