On Feeling Selfish

I just finished a book that was so wonderful it left me feeling at one time delighted but also heartbroken and a little bit bereft. So much so that the temptation is there to simply flip back to page one and start over again, though you know that you'll never quite recapture the magic that's there between the pages on the first read through.

And I can't tell you exactly what it is that made it so perfect. Was it the series of vignettes, showing the hidden lives, needs, thoughts, and souls of the various characters? Or was it the way they were so delightfully woven together into a cohesive unit that you hardly noticed they were simply vignettes, printed one after the other and sewn together with tendrils of fairy dust that you could almost see sparkling on the edges of the page? Or did the author, like the main character, somehow glimpse exactly what I needed at just this moment and put it on the page? (Though I suspect that it'll still be there at different stages in life for different people...so that's unlikely to be it, unless of course there is some universal hunger that this book manages to capture.)

Even still, with all that, I am hesitant to publish this post. Because inevitably, some of you will see this and read the book and, perhaps, not love it like I did. And maybe you'll even dislike it. And then you will want to question me on why I could possibly have been moved to tears and laughed aloud while journeying through it. And the glimmering fairy dust will get wiped off the edges of the pages and it will become just another book that I remember enjoying.

But it seems selfish to have enjoyed something so thoroughly and not share it...so I will simply heartily recommend The School of Essential Ingredients and ask you please, if you hate it, or if you want to have a deep philosophical discussion about it, to please find someone other than me to participate with you.