Words

I just finished reading Muriel Bradbury's Gourmet Rhapsody yesterday. I read it cover-to-cover in one evening -a much more epicurean project than Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I also adored. Rhapsody was quick and guilty, with a real and bittersweet ending... like chocolate.

Here's one of the passages that swallowed me:

"Words: repositories for singular realities which they then transform into moments in an anthology, magicians that change the face of reality by adorning it with the right to become memorable, to be placed in a library of memories. Life exists only by virtue of the osmosis of words and facts, where the former encase the latter in ceremonial dress. Thus, the words of my chance acquaintances, crowning the meal with an unprecedented grace, had almost formed the substance of my feast in spite of myself, and what I had enjoyed so merrily was the verb, not the meat."

It made me excited to devour the book, and move on to the next; to again surrender to the power, and magic, of words.

Next up: Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. So close on the heels of 100 Years of Solitude, I seem to be falling into a literary cadence of (right foot) third-world epic fantasy, (left foot) eloquent philosophical high-culture novel.

Whatever will be next?

photos: etsy christmas library print book, GloriosityLCTBookshelf09, artwork by Scottish artist Georgia Russell, Lorinix Photography, B/W book found on Google Images, GloriosityLCTBookBarnCT09.