Stories from BOA Readers: #BOATurns40

I was in the throes of exhaustion and maybe depression in graduate school. My Master's thesis advisor (of blessed memory) kept slashing paragraphs and whole pages of each draft I brought him. GET RID OF THIS! he'd yell at me. THERE'S JUST TOO MUCH DAMN VOICE. A friend suggested I read Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy; it was one of the largest tomes I've ever hauled around, and it was my escape from the life of academic writing. I couldn't put it down. I found myself on the T, from Harvard Square out to UMass Boston, missing my stop because...

John Updike's "Pigeon Feathers" saved my life. As a teenager in the 1980s, I found myself burdened by the hard religious teachings of my youth and the failure of the adults in my life to apply their professed beliefs to the world around me. At the age of seventeen this tension reached its peak as the AIDS crisis loomed and the sub-culture of my parents' world failed to meet the need for compassion toward people who were HIV positive. I was always an avid reader and books had opened my eyes to a bigger world. But now my heart was...

It is not always the profound words we read that offer the opportunity for change; sometimes it is the simple ideas that provoke us, appeal to us, and challenge us to appreciate what life has provided. The inspiration we find as we attempt to interpret the meaning behind an author’s words can be incredibly unpredictable. One such experience happened to me a few months ago.It started with my girlfriend’s passion for Li-Young Lee's writing, which she has loved since she first began reading poetry. The inspiration she has found in his writing has not only influenced her as a writer,...

He was standing alone in the hallway. Strikingly tall. Perfectly content in his, "own loneliness." I walked over and he took my outstretched hand. He looked at me directly, serious eyes behind brown-rimmed glasses. My nerves allowed only a rambling sentence. "Mr. Lee, I have to thank you, your book Rose, that book was the reason I started reading and writing poetry." As I spoke he measured each word with a slow, affirming nod and mouthed unspoken thanks. It was a rare moment - thanking the man who, in my greatest loneliness, told me I was not alone. To this...

Walter Benjamin once likened the reading of a book to the lighting of a funeral pyre. The reader, Benjamin says, chases a truth “whose living flame continues to burn over the heavy logs of the past and the light ashes of life gone by.” The best books light a fire, and continue to burn higher and higher as our lives progress. Such books make us confront and better understand our past. They equip and encourage us to work on a better future.