When M. suggested Monica Wood’s How to Read a Book and I read the book jacket I worried it was going to be another very annoying book like 100 Year Old Man or Eleanor Oliphant where you are just so annoyed the whole time you’re reading because everything is so cute and sweet and all the cantankerous characters are just misunderstood until they are fixed.
And it was a *teeeeeeny bit too happy an ending (what can I say. I live for the heartbreak.) but throughout there were all sorts of unexpected happenings that were somehow also entirely believable, and there was just such abundance of kindness and generosity and willingness to see people as just trying their best.
We follow three characters – Violet who begins the book in prison, Frank who begins the book in a bookshop, and Harriet who begins the book facilitating a book club in the prison – as their lives intersect in spectacular (and let’s admit it, somewhat predictable) ways.
Throughout we meet some parrots and cats and eat good meals and take many leisurely strolls and no one moves at a pace faster than a retiree and we think about how books and stories can heal and how in all of our lives there is the main story and there is the meanwhile.
So yes. You will almost certainly no matter what want something soft and gentle and heart-filling to take you through November, and let this be the one. Good writing and kind, kind people.
Literary Vice 