Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

Searching for something to read has never been a dilemma. My kindle is stacked high, along with some stray, real books to quench my desire. Libraries, book stores, bestseller list, kindle stores can guide me. Persuade me to choose, this or that. What thrills me most is the prize read that I have picked out, totally due to book cover and title!!!! Such as, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, My Year of Magical Reading, by Nina Sankovitch. Magical reading, or purple chair? hard to say what grabbed me, but it wasn't a review that I had not read. Never heard of this author, like the name Nina, I have been known to pick a book because of a good name, you never know?(long run-on sentence, makes me happy also!! so don't squirm) So last week, I sunk into my spot, and buried myself in this grand book. It is briefly about a women whose sister dies. She vows to read one book a day, and write a review, to honor their love of books. Sort of??? It is so much more, it is about living, and circumstances. Values of Experience, real or imagined, is that it shows us how to-or how not to-live, a highlighted line in the book, by me. Some others that required an underline or two were, I lost faith in the future. I took my sisters death as a sign that the whole world no longer waited for me. Also, My life is a reflection of her life. I will anchor myself with her life, and not her death. Death took choices away from her, but not from me, and I choose to live on with her beside me. None of these quotes mention books and reading, confused yet? How about this line from Henry Ward Beecher, " A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors." That better describes what reading provided for this woman, her year of reading. We race through life, filling our lives and others with lists of things to do. Sometimes we need to just sit still and read. If you are lucky, you have a purple chair.