5.14.23
Anu and I went to the local library yesterday. I am always uncertain as to what books to take from the library whenever I make a trip, which Anu points out to me and reminds me to take a list of books that I would like to check out. Somehow my plan gets mixed up and I am always at a loss, looking at the line up of the extraordinary books. Yesterday was no different. I parked the car in the library parking lot when Anu suggested that we have a look at the aged tree that stood at the front of the pathway to the library. So we went toward the tree, which looked enormous. She wondered how many people it would take to embrace the tree with their arms stretched out and, as though willing to demonstrate her hypothesis, she stood embracing the tree. How old could that tree be, she wondered. I commented that it may be three hundred years old and it might have seen several generations of people like us. This tree must have been planted hundreds of years ago by a person who could not have imagined that it would stand the test of time and survive this longer. I took out my cell phone and took some pictures of her hugging the tree and showed it to her. She kept looking at the tree, unable to control her amazement and awe. She said she had tears in her eyes and was emotional. I did see tears in her eyes and her voice trembled when she spoke.
I took four books: Everyman by Philip Roth, The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway (I had already read this book a few months ago but wanted to read it again because Mario Vargas Llosa mentioned in his Letters to a young novelist that this is the greatest book written by papa. I got mixed up with the stories of A farewell to arms, which I read almost 2 years ago and could not grasp its story, and The Sun Also… whose story I fell in love with. I picked this book up thinking this was the story I could not follow the first time around, but now, on reading its first chapter I found that this book’s contents were still etched in my memory so I gave up reading a second time after the first chapter.) How fiction works and Write for life, two books on fiction. Confused though I am about what fiction books to choose from, I make it a point to take books about the art of fiction every time I go to the library.
