A good book is a delightful companion. An entertaining experience.

I like how a good book makes me feel. Happy, sad, involved, questioning, curious, enlightened, helpless, angry and vindicated. A gamut of thoughts, feelings and emotions. Sometimes, I even speak to the characters. That’s how interactive I get. Thanks to the host of brilliant writers from all over the world. The outstanding quality of their writing. The incredible ability to tell masterful stories that attract, captivate and sustain interest from start to finish. And, stir a sense of sadness and wanting more, like I usually feel, at the end of a nice holiday. 

I also imagine the characters. I visualise the scenes. If I feel a book has movie potential, then I do a casting scenario in my head. As I’m reading, my mind is matching fictional characters that I particularly like with real actors and actresses. What fun. That said, some books turned into movies tend not to work that well. To be fair, it’s not easy to transform a well-researched book with wonderful dialogue and nuanced characters into a meaningful and memorable ninety minutes movie.

So far this year, I’ve had a happy run or more like a satisfied trot with books. A few good novels. Some better than others but none disappointed. All gave me a keen desire to carry on reading. I say this only because there’ve been times when I’ve had encounters with bad books. I start. Don’t like the story or writing style. Lose interest. Don’t finish. After a few similar encounters, I stop reading. I take a break. And, it becomes a little difficult to get back on the reading wagon. I actually don’t like being book-less.

My fault. I have a flawed selection system. I read the synopsis. I think I might like. I buy. I do favour some authors more than others. I don’t choose books based on a bestsellers list or awards won. I don’t like samey stories. I also don’t like graphic killing, torture and decapitating. As an aside, I love book shops as much as cake shops (and that’s saying a lot). I can spend hours just looking and browsing through novels, cook books, travel books, self-help books, specialist titles, and even children’s books. I miss not being able to physically walkabout in a book shop. Sigh.

Anyways, my recent first online purchase has been rather successful. I bought five books. Jodi Picoult’s “A Spark of Light” and “House Rules,” Leah Kaminsky’s “Waiting Room,” Matt Haig’s “How to Stop Time,” and Joseph Finder’s “Guilty Minds.” Have read three. All three have got my thumbs up. They were excellent.

I especially enjoyed “A Spark of Light.” Why? Because it focused on a tough issue to discuss and address, and even more difficult to write about.  A story about pro-choice and pro-life. A sensitive topic at the best of times. Both sides of the divide have strong, passionate and preconceived views that seem too difficult to reconcile or even meet some of the way.

I liked how the story was narrated. An hourly reverse countdown, from 5pm to 8am, of a tense hostage situation at a legal abortion clinic in Mississippi. The characters, caught in the crisis, were introduced and explained via backstories – personal life, family, relationships, professions. They were all likeable bar the gunman (he had his reasons but killing and violence are totally unacceptable under any circumstance). A few of the characters were oddly relatable. Conversations and experiences that took me back to my childhood. Sister number 3, who also read the book, thought the same particularly about Izzy and her early life. A confirmation that – family and relationships – are the same, wherever. I also liked how interwoven the characters were to the socio-economic landscape of this Southern state in the US.

There were many insightful and share worthy sentences and paragraphs in the book. My favourites were:

“You don’t look at another person’s plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.” This humbled me. I do try to be kinder and more mindful of others.

“When you say you can’t do something because your religion forbids it, that’s a good thing. When you say I can’t do something because YOUR religion forbids it, that’s a problem.” This is an important reminder of boundaries and individual rights and choices.

“No matter how many times you let someone go, it never got any easier.” So true.

 “Laws are black and white. The lives of women are a thousand shades of gray.” So many things influence people’s decisions and lives – emotion, responsibility, education, poverty, deprivation and circumstance.

‘A Spark of Light’ resonated with me on so many levels. I dog-eared pages and pages to return to again and again. A very good read.