A Little Sunday Reading v. 8

I love books about reading. Love finding out what authors deem "good" reading material. Love finding out how books and the reading experience moves people. The past month or so, before bed, I've been reading essays out of The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them. So, so charming. I haven't read many of the books mentioned by the writers but enjoyed their accounts just the same. It is so fascinating to learn how different books impact different people. In particular, I appreciate reading reflections of books that I hated and understanding beauty in the work.

Some notable passages:
"A good book changes you, even if it is only to add a little to the furniture of your mine. It will make you laugh and perhaps even cry; it should certainly make you think. A great book will make you dream in regions you have never dared to before, and ultimately it will spur you to create or achieve something new yourself."

"Reading a book became an act of intimacy. Take in a breath and don't let it out until you get to the last page."

"But your journey is never over until you return from it to share with society what you have learned. Then and only then can you begin your next journey in life as the process repeats itself, as you constantly become."

"I read my way through a solitary childhood. Books were the bedrock of my emotional and intellectual life, books that proscribed no limit to the imagination, books that were full of resourceful girls, princesses and goatherds and Victorian maidens, not to mention the sand fairies, the talking animals, the scheming step families, and the handsome men who had been transformed into beasts, both real and metaphorical."

In other reading news, CNN had a story about great bookstores. Who doesn't love a good bookstore?