It’s happened to me a few times that a book is otherwise fairly forgettable presents a fantastic insight, or crystallizes an idea I’d felt but never verbalized. It’s one the major reasons I rarely stop reading books, probably to my detriment. I’ll give my example, but I’m curious what other people have discovered in books they probably wouldn’t recommend.

In Richard Farr’s “The Fire Seekers,” an adventure story with a historical bent that focused on all the wrong things in my opinion, had this line that literally led me to have a better relationship with my father: “[my father] wants to feel close to me, wants to understand me, and wants the
easy road to that result, which is me being more like him than I am.”

What about you?

  • jejo63@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    In The Sundays of Jean Dézert, the main character Jean spends his whole life being utterly unremarkable and average, doing the same routine of deadend job day in and day out. The first and only substantial thing in his life occurs during the book, which is meeting and proposing to a woman, only for her to very quickly after agreeing wonder what she was thinking and call it off. As he’s walking home from the failure of the first and only meaningful event in his life, this passage occurs:

    Two barges are moored next to each another, bow to bow. A length of rope occasionally creaks. “How well, I understand you, barges,” thinks Jean Dézert. “You spend your rectilinear existence in these narrow canals. You wait in front of the locks. You cross through cities, pulled under bridges by tugboats that loudly proclaim their pride at owning a siren like real ships. All in all, you resemble me. You’ll never get to the sea.”

    The idea of ‘never getting to the sea’ really encapsulated some of the feelings I’ve had in down periods of my life.