I don’t read that much these days. I am lucky now if I read one novel a month. I am ashamed to admit that my current book has been open for six weeks. This isn’t me. I am a lifelong devoted reader: the kid who hauled home a bicycle basket full of books from the public library every Saturday, and the teenager who found solace in reading myself into other lives.

I am grateful to the authors who transported me. Their stories accompanied me through deep loneliness. Seeing life through someone else’s eyes allowed for a kind of mind sync between my mind and the writer’s mind. Even if the writer lived in another century or across the world, there was a consciousness making me feel, think, and see beyond my own. To this day, each time I open up a novel and read the first few paragraphs, I feel the thrill of becoming situated........

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