Reading a great book is like sinking into a deep tub filled with hot water and covered with scented bubbles. The rest of the world falls away and you feel like you’re returning to your “other life.”
When I was young, I would look up from my book to see my mother, hands on hips, shouting my name. Inside, I felt like I’d been yanked from another world. I know I blinked at her, as if surprised to find myself lying on a couch in my living room instead of riding in a carriage in 19th century New York City, or crossing the moors of England, or fighting a war in France.
Sometimes I feel a bit like Henry from The Time Traveler’s Wife. With very little warning, he would disappear and travel through time. If you have not read this book, you must. I don’t say this too often (or maybe I do?) but seriously, it knocked my socks off. I read it several years ago and a single thought can place me back inside that novel today, feeling the cold Chicago air, or the warm sun on my shoulders in the meadow behind the house in Grand Rapids.
The book is highly intellectual—read with thinking cap on—but also very relational. There’s a good bit of cussing and the poor guy ends up naked every time he travels, but the story is riveting. Unforgettable. Stunning.
It’s a new year, and with it—God willing—I’ll write another book. When I write, there is less time to read, but when I read, there is more fodder for writing. So I’m looking for the next novel to read even as I plot my own next story. Suggestions welcome, though "my stack" beckons.
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