Marginalia

"In getting my books, I have always been solicitous of an ample margin; this not so much through any love of the thing in itself, however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of penciling suggested thoughts, agreements and differences of opinion, or brief critical comments in general."

—Edgar Allen Poe, writing in his essay Marginalia.

I love books. I have always turned to them for answers to understand life and how to live. In university, I changed paths from pursuing a biology degree to pursuing an English Literature degree, as I'd become enamoured by literature's capacity to encompass all of life. 

Novels were magical and mysterious. As a young student I would pull an orange-spined Penguin from a bookshelf, open it and smell its musty, pulpy pages, revel at the sentences crafted by some one, for a reader, for me. I still feel the same way starting a novel of a writer whom I trust, whether dead or alive.

I read non-fiction, too, where the truths are more plain-faced. I cannot clearly tell how all the books I have read have influenced me, yet I know they have shaped me for the better. And my thirst for reading remains unquenched.

Here, I share—as Poe defined in his essay quoted above—my marginalia: reflections on stories, themes and ideas. I don't  presume to distill the 'meaning' out of works of fiction. I'm writing about them because I enjoy it, and it allows me to clarify and further understand my own life. My hope would be that you might pick up and read for yourself one or more of these books.