November 223, 2023

While everyone else is watching football or snoozing after eating too much turkey and all the sides, treat yourself to this gentle and charming book, The Door-to-Door Bookshop by Carsten Henn, translated from the German by Melody Shaw. However, since independent bookstores are not open today, stop at your favorite bookstore during the wild Friday shopping to buy this book as a Christmas treat for yourself.

Carl’s favorite task at the bookshop where he works is to pick out just the right books and deliver them to housebound readers. A young girl, Schaschas, begins to join him on his rounds, calling him a BookWalker. She is wise beyond her years and has opinions about the kinds of books his customers need, in order to make their lives better. Of course, there are villains along the way, especially the bookshop’s daughter who inherits the store and does not think delivering books is necessary. Clearly, she is not a book person.

Instead of describing some of the customers, here are few representative quotes about books.

Books with green covers were not to be trusted.

p. 16

Even when an extraordinary book ends at precisely the right point, with precisely the right words, and anything further would only destroy that perfection, it still leaves us wanting more pages. That is the paradox of reading.

p. 135

Then he read his favorite novel, The Uncommon Reader, a slim volume by a renowned author; he allowed himself to read it only once a year, looking forward to it each time like a connoisseur anticipating the first asparagus of the season.

p. 71

At various points in the book Henn compares readers to certain animals: hares who race through a book, fish who allow a book to carry them along their current, lapwings who jumped ahead to the ending, and tortoises who fall asleep often after a single page and take months to finish a book.

I think I’m a combination hare and fish.

Gentle and charming.

An Invitation

What books would you describe as gentle and charming? I would love to know.

Note: A Thanksgiving Prayer and Note

Before sending today’s post I moved into the snug for my morning meditation time. This morning I re-read a section about the Thanksgiving holiday from Diana Butler Bass’s book, Grateful, The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks. She quotes from this prayer by Adam Lee:

May this sharing of food foster peace and understanding among us, may it bring us to the recognition that we depend on each other for all the good we can ever hope to receive, and that all the good we can hope to accomplish rests in helping others in turn.

May it remind us that as we reach out to others to brighten their lives, so are our lives brightened in turn.

p. 131

May today, however you choose to be in it, be a day of awareness of the blessings that abound in your life, but also a day of intention to increase the blessings for those who experience scarcity or fear or pain.

Thank you for reading my posts. I am grateful.