on reading a good book

when you read a truly good book, you savor each moment. you do not speed ahead toward completion, the moment when another book erases the futility of the present journey. words and phrases are underlined, starred, impelling you to gaze into the distance, working to wrap your mind around something amazing.

you pace yourself. when you are too tired, you look at a magazine so as not to waste the book on inattentiveness. as you near the end, you orchestrate the “place in which you will complete the good book.” in thailand you will go to bed earlier than usual, leaving the dinner table and showering to allow enough time to pour over white teeth. in india you will move your bed outside, laying in the sun, to complete the way of the peaceful warrior. today, in perham, you will lounge on the porch, preventing your eyes from darting ahead to the next sentence, preventing them from skimming to savor one hundred years of solitude as the wind causes the trees to impersonate the sound of rain.

when it’s over, there’s a period of mourning. you flip through the book, mentally revisiting the tale, re-reading starred and underlined passages. you read the notes you took about phone conversations, songs on the radio, quotes from movies, advice from friends stored on the back flap of the book, wedding this novel to a specific time and place in life. you sit for a moment, unmoving, fully experiencing the rare novel that draws a dot-to-dot between your favorite song, the movie you were watching, the conversation you had with your best friend on the phone and the topic of your thoughts in the car this morning.

you will tell the people you love they must read the book or you will call the person who recommended it to you to highlight the kinship the book created. you might loan this well-loved, written on copy to a loved one, but they must be a kindred of a certain quality. one with whom you wouldn’t mind sharing your musings. one you would welcome to add their marks to the notes in the columns. the book will become part of your everyday. acquaintances and loved ones will have the tenacity of ursula or the dedication of aureliano. butterflies fluttering in the air will assume a heftier weight. when you are down you will put on heavy boots and feeling jubilant will feel like one hundred dollars.

this book could have been sitting on your shelf for years. you might have read the first page multiple times, in the book store, off a friend’s desk, returning it to it’s place after deciding the tone, diction, topic didn’t suit the moment. but this time, you chose it. and this time, it was the perfect accompaniment to your reality.