My mom loved this book and wanted me to read it long before I got around to do so. I finally put it on my TBR and due to the 2017 Reading Challenge of a book about books it moved up quickly to the top of the stack.
A book I could relate to on so many levels - my personal love of reading, the shared love of reading between my mom and I (who are in an actual book club together as well as the reading challenge and in general share books all the time), and the shared love of reading between my mom, my grandmother and I. The book touched an even more personal note as my mom and grandmother shared their love of books recently in my grandmother's final years/months as my mom was her live-in caretaker, uploading books to gramma's kindle for her to enjoy and often reading books to her.
The book's subtle political tones, while written in 2012, were very relevant today as Mrs. Schwalbe was active in the arena of refugees. I can only imagine how heartbroken she would be with the current "presidency" and ban on refugees and immigrants.
Quotes: "One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality...printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places: in a box full of old picture frames...or in the laundry basket, wrapped in a sweatshirt. But at other times they'll comfort you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years. I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. They may make me feel, but you can't feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight. They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it."
"The world is complicated...You don't have to have one emotion at a time."
"...people aren't here for you; everyone is here for one another."
"Evil almost always starts with small cruelties."
"To be an American is to be a believer...They're [refugees] just people like us who've lost everything and need another chance.... it takes so little to help people, and people really do help each other, even people with very little themselves. And its not just about second chances. Most people deserve an endless number of chances."
"...books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books...is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in the human conversation....you can make a difference in the world and that books really do matter: they're how we know what we need to do in life, and how we tell others....books can be how we get closer to each other, and stay close..."
