openthighs_sarah
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2003
- Posts
- 713
I like to keep a protective coating of dust on my bookshelves just in case something gets spilled on them, but now and then I break down and clean them off... Yesterday I was cleaning and I picked up a particular book, opened it randomly and read a few lines of dialogue.
This is what I read:
"What do you think I am?" Alessandro asked, "an idiot savant? The moon is capricious to the point of insanity. It rises and sets all over the place, at different times. You never know what it's going to do. Sometimes it doesn't appear, sometimes it's disguised as a pale crescent, and sometimes it comes out full in the daylight. The sun doesn't shine at night, does it."
"Not in Europe."
"Imagine if, like the moon, the sun did as it pleased. Only an idiot-savant, someone intoxicated with logarithms and railroad timetables, would know when the moon rises."
"Do you know?" she asked.
"In about an hour."
The book is A Soldier of the Great War, by the way (by Mark Helprin). I first read it about ten years ago, and what I remember most -- and what came back to me just from reading a half a page picked at random in the middle of the story -- was that I didn't just love the book. I remember being happy that the book existed, that it had been written in the first place, and I thought that no matter what, no matter how few or how many people read that book... the world was a more beautiful place because of it. And that floored me, that a complete stranger could sit down, completely alone, and simply by pouring something forth from his imagination, actually change the world around me.
Anyway... I was just remembering all of that, and I wondered if anyone else felt the same way about a book: not just a favorite, but a book that, for a little while at least, changed the shape and the texture and the color of the world for you. And if so, do you remember how it felt?
A week or so ago, someone posted a list of questions in this forum. By answering the questions, you were letting people "see" the real you a little bit. But I've always thought the best way to really see someone is to find out what moves that person. So in that spirit... I hope a few people, at least, want to expose themselves a little. (And if not, it was fun just posting a message about something I love.)
This is what I read:
"What do you think I am?" Alessandro asked, "an idiot savant? The moon is capricious to the point of insanity. It rises and sets all over the place, at different times. You never know what it's going to do. Sometimes it doesn't appear, sometimes it's disguised as a pale crescent, and sometimes it comes out full in the daylight. The sun doesn't shine at night, does it."
"Not in Europe."
"Imagine if, like the moon, the sun did as it pleased. Only an idiot-savant, someone intoxicated with logarithms and railroad timetables, would know when the moon rises."
"Do you know?" she asked.
"In about an hour."
The book is A Soldier of the Great War, by the way (by Mark Helprin). I first read it about ten years ago, and what I remember most -- and what came back to me just from reading a half a page picked at random in the middle of the story -- was that I didn't just love the book. I remember being happy that the book existed, that it had been written in the first place, and I thought that no matter what, no matter how few or how many people read that book... the world was a more beautiful place because of it. And that floored me, that a complete stranger could sit down, completely alone, and simply by pouring something forth from his imagination, actually change the world around me.
Anyway... I was just remembering all of that, and I wondered if anyone else felt the same way about a book: not just a favorite, but a book that, for a little while at least, changed the shape and the texture and the color of the world for you. And if so, do you remember how it felt?
A week or so ago, someone posted a list of questions in this forum. By answering the questions, you were letting people "see" the real you a little bit. But I've always thought the best way to really see someone is to find out what moves that person. So in that spirit... I hope a few people, at least, want to expose themselves a little. (And if not, it was fun just posting a message about something I love.)
