“Late into the night she reads, and the lamplight falls in a soft circle across her tented knees, across the warm blankets, across Luca's casting breath. In their new home, Lydia rereads Amor en los tiempos del colera, first in Spanish, then again in English. No one can take this from her. This book is hers alone.” ReadingLiteratureBooksIndividualityRefugeReadersLove Of ReadingPersonal Interpretation Book:American Dirt Source: American Dirt
“Bookstores, invariably, are a refuge. There's one in the town where they live, and the first time Lydia ventures in, it takes her breath away. She has to steady herself against a shelf. The smell of coffee and paper and ink. It's nothing like her little shop back home. It's stocked mostly with religious books, and instead of calendars and toys, they carry rosaries, Buddha figurines, yarmulkes. Still, the upright spines of the books are bedrock. Steady. There's an international poetry section. Hafiz. Heaney. Neruda. Lydia flips past the twenty love poems and reads "The Song of Despair." She reads it desperately, hungrily, bent over the books in the aisle of the quiet shop. Her fingers ready the next page while she devours the words. The book is water in the desert.” PoetryReadingLiteratureBooksComfortRefugeBookstoresLove Of ReadingBook LoveLove Of Books Book:American Dirt Source: American Dirt