My Reading Life

 

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Non-Fiction Physical Book

I love this book. I mean I love the actual book. It is small, perfect for holding, and has a beautiful cover. I so enjoyed holding it and reading it. It is a collection of essays written by Pat Conroy, celebrating the books, people (some nice, some not so nice) and libraries that shaped his soul. I loved it. It inspired me! It caused me to reflect on my own reading journey. I may even write a similarly themed book, as it brought so many of my reading memories. I particularly loved the last two chapters. May I share some of my favorite quotes from those chapters:
“My mother’s voice and my father’s fists are the two bookends of my childhood, and they form the basis of my art.”
“I have tried to read two hundred pages every day of my life since I was a freshman in high school.”
“Here is what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer’s heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food and drink, because a writer has possessed me, crazed me, with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.”
“That’s what a good book does-it puts readers on their knees. It makes you want to believe in a world you just read about-the one that will make you feel different about the world you thought you lived in, the world that will never be the same.”

And that is what Conroy does. Every sentence he writes is perfection. I am working my way through his books. I loved this little book that gives background and insight into his soul and life and will help me appreciate each of his books. 5 stars.


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