Thursday, March 14, 2013

The Tender Bar

That's what I'm reading right now.
Even though we've all lost an hour's sleep this week due to 'springing forward' I feel anything but spring-y, or spritely.
You see, I've spent a lot of my sleep time this week enmeshed, deeply, in this book.
Small print. Lots of words on a page.
Un-put-down-able.
I won't give anything away by telling you that:
it's a memoir;
the writer grew up just outside of New York City;
it does involve a bar;
and one of those weird childhoods that seem pre-requisite for memoir writing.
(I knew one day I'd be grateful for mine).

Last night I happened upon my favourite cluster of lines, (thus far, I know there is going to be more), and I was in that moment, while reading alone, wondrous.
Wondrous of life, of books, of reading, of lying in my Ikea bed, alone, my husband in a different country, my apartment full of hush, the reading lamp, my white tee-shirt serving as a pajama top.
The in-between weather, dipping below freezing at night on a Wednesday, and run-without-a-jacket on Sunday morning.
I read this:

' "A book is a miracle," Bill said. "Every book represents a moment when someone sat quietly--and that quiet is part of the miracle, make no mistake--and tried to tell the rest of us a story."
Bud could talk ceaselessly about the hope of books, the promise of books.  He said it was no accident that a book opened just like a door. '

The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer, (c) 2006







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