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A Whole Library of Mistakes
“I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.”
~Edna St. Vincent Millay
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“A society that has no respect, no regard for its bards, its historians, its storytellers, is a society in steep decline, a society that has lost its very soul and may never find its way.”
― Laurence Overmire
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Out of sight of nuns and parents I’d grab books at random off the shelves. Sometimes I’d flip through one for a while, go “Eh” and put it back. But one day I came across “The Good Earth,” sat at a table, and after a few pages went into a dream state. I didn’t wake until I’d finished it; then checked it out, took it home, and read it again. I was mesmerized by this story written with such brilliant simplicity that even a child could enter it, one that showed through the life of one peasant family how in a single generation China moved from a thousand-year-old feudal and agrarian society into the modern world.
At ten I was already a voracious reader — western novels, history, space operas, comic books, cereal boxes — but not until I read “The Good Earth” did I experience how fine literature can take us outside ourselves and teach us something important about the world…
