For several years, I was accustomed to reading about two books per week. In early December I received from friends a “care” package including a novel, which I savored as soon as I completed the term and turned in my grades. In late January, I received from my friend a package containing five English books! I regarded the package as treasure and tried to restrain myself from reading all the books at once, so that they could last through the end of  term, but could not, and read the first two right away.  Then I saved Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford for February.  It is a complex novel set in Seattle and shifts between the 1980’s and the 1940’s showing the past woven beneath and through the present.

In March I went to Shanghai for a conference and bought all four of the speaker’s books.  I read all of them immediately, one before I left Shanghai.  In the past three days, I have read my book for April, The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, a story set in 1941.  Today I read various news items from the internet and felt that I was still inside the book.  “Chilling” is not too strong a word for my feeling.

Read on: take flight, visit another world, another time, another place; take heart, test your mind and your spirit; take life in all its grief and all its glory.