Literature Lust: Love Letter for Readers and Writers
February 2, 2020 | #5

January is over, and I hope that you filled it with great reading on those long, cold winter nights. Luckily, there is no season for reading. Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. Every day is a great day to enjoy a book!


Warm words and wishes!
Melissa
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger is no ordinary book. It's a coming-of-age-murder-mystery-relationship-primer-dealing-with-grief-finding-faith kind of book.
Have you read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout yet?
OR
Do you finish a book if you don't like the main character?
Thank you, Joan, for this recommendation! Since Krueger is known for his mysteries, I expected just that - a nice murder mystery. What I got was so much more!

Ordinary Grace is a great read about the universal emotions of loss and grief, finding faith, and the small miracles that shape us.
Consider this.

Sometimes an unlikable character impacts you the most. Did I like Olive Kitteridge? Not really. But did I learn from her? Grow to respect her? You bet.

Try it. You might like it.
" To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
– W. Somerset Maugham
In other Literature Lust newsletters, I've showcased cool vocabulary words.
For this issue, I'm going to highlight a couple beautiful phrases that I came across
while reading ---- because good stories are built a sentence at a time.

"...eyes whose blue was so intense it was if he'd purchased pieces of the sky for their making."

- William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace
"Time has replanted a few seeds of optimism in the new, forever-altered soil of me. My heart can and should still be followed."

Zoe Fishman, "The Subway Crush Who Crushed Me" in The New York Times ' Modern Love Story, December 20, 2019
Groundhog Day:

What book have you read more than once?

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