My Favorite Book about Reading

How Reading Changed My Life,
Anna Quindlen,
Ballantine Books

This is my favorite book about reading. It really is a gem of a book, with less than 100 pages. I've carried it in my purse (it's small enough), reading and re-reading it everywhere--on the MRT train, at the dentist's office, in between classes, waiting in line at the bank. . . whenever I get snippets of time to indulge in reading. And in a minute or less, I am transported to another time and place, and the tedium of waiting is transformed into delicious moments of stolen time.

Here is a favorite passage from the book:

"Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. 'Book love,' Trollope called it. 'It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.' Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort--God, sex, food, family, friends--reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least publicly, although it was really all I thought of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in a chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room. I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth."

Recently, I came across another quotation by Anna Quindlen:
"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."

I can't agree more.