A Book, Books, and THE Book: The Power of Words

I just finished reading The Little Paris Bookshop, an international bestseller. It's a delightful novel about a man who sells books from his "The Literary Apothecary" located on a barge. He has a gift for "reading" people and presenting them with just the right book to meet their needs. The book is a love story on many levels as well as a travel book as the man makes his way through France. Any word-lover will savor the language in this book: "a man with a leathery skin like an iguana's," "the countryside beneath glittering stars and red summer moons," "hair like coarse flax on a spindle," cats' "tails bristling like scrubbing brushes," "weeping willows trailed their branches in the water like playful fingers," "thinking felt like wading through treacle," "wallowing in our happiness like roast beef in gravy." The book conveys the lesson that books have the power to change lives. This lesson has been borne out in the lives of several notable people like Ignatius of Loyola. When he was a soldier recuperating from serious wounds, no romantic novels were available, so he read The Life of Christ and a book on the lives of the Saints. Those books set him on the path to being one of the greatest saints himself. A friend of mine became a Catholic after reading Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain.  Click to continue