Review: Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading (Nina Sankovitch) This was a nice book to read a chapter of each evening. Smacked down by the loss of her sister from a fast-moving cancer in middle age, Nina was struggling to slow down the frantic pace of her life enough to allow herself to heal and move on. She made the decision about a year or so on to modify her days to allow her to literally read a book a day for a full year, and in the process, she regained a sense of calm and an appreciation of all life was offering her even with the aching loss ever present. So this is one huge affirmation of the power of reading to engage, to teach, to heal, to encourage. She had a life that allowed this even as she continued to care for her children and husband; the book is as much a story of her/their/her sister's, her parents' lives as it is about the magic of reading, so interesting but not quite what I expected (I am not sure what I expected, actually). I know there is no way I could ever read a full book a day for a full year, even if I was completely free time-wise to do so; I would fidget, be restless, occasionally just be stuck, so I am amazed by her ability to do this (true, she "limited" her books to 300 pages or so and, if she was not taken right away with the chosen book of the day, she would put it aside and choose another). She set out to use books "to escape back to life", and she felt at the end that she had been successful.

on the bench near the entrances

Found at Beach Pea and shared with a neighbor. Will be released at Kittery Town Hall.