Tolstoy and the Purple Chair audiobook

Another reread.

"Tolstoy and the Purple Chair" is a book for people who love to read. From the first chapter with the author's description of a day spent on a bench by the sea reading Bram Stoke's "Dracula", ultimately finishing the last of its' 400 pages in her hotel room that night, I was totally caught up in her story. After Nina Sankovitch's beloved older sister Anne-Marie dies of cancer at age 46, Nina spends the next three years cramming as much as possible into her days, not just to escape the pain of losing her sister but also to try and live life "double" - for her sister and all that she missed as well as for herself. Exhausted, with grief unabated, Nina decides to use the love of books that she shared with Anne-Marie as an "escape back to life"..in her words "to engulf herself in books and come up whole again". She decides to read a book a day for a year. She started a web site titled "Read All Day", whose motto is "Great good comes from reading great books". What lover of books couldn't identify with that?And so Nina begins her year on her own 46th birthday, not looking to assuage her grief but as she puts it "hoping for answers...trusting in books...to answer the question of why she deserved to live and how she should live". Delving into not only the books she read, but also her memories of her family, specifically her sister.The author's love of the written word is evident in her finely chosen, almost poetic prose. Her "year of magical reading" is itself a magical read. In the author's honor, I read it all in one day. Highly recommended.

A warning: you may be tempted to do what I did and stay up way past your bedtime reading this book. You may get your car washed just so you can sit in the waiting room for 7 minutes and get back to this story. You may take it everywhere with you for a couple of days. But don't. It will end much too soon that way.Nina was an acquaintance in high school and has become a friend 30 years later via social media. I don't believe, however, that we are close enough that our relationship influences my feelings about her book. It just means I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy.In fact I found Nina again because I heard she was in the process of reading a book every day for a year. Like probably everyone who learned about what she was doing my first thought was "how?" I quickly realized that the 8 hours I am at work and unavailable to my family and my home is the same 8 hours she was using to read (plus she also used my reading time after dinner and at the car wash). Reading was her work for a year. What a great job. Her project inspired me to read more myself. I couldn't do a book a day but I could aim for a book a week, and that's what I did. I read 52 books in 2009, all because of Nina. Not only did I read all of those books (stealing the time from mindless t.v. watching primarily), but I read them with more focus and attention than I'd previously read. And like Nina, it rewarded me beyond my expectations.Nina's book is not just about what it's like to read 365 books in one year. And it's not just about the impetus of the project (the untimely death of her sister). It's also about what reading means to those of us who love it. How it unites us and gives meaning to seemingly senseless events. How it sustains us and can fill in so many gaps in our lives (for me it was growing up without siblings or a father, but we all have them). It's also about leading an examined life, appreciating everything that happens to us, and finding ways to turn down the noise and really think about something, anything. It is not pedantic or preachy; Nina never suggests we should quit our jobs and read all day. And it's not just an annotated list of 365 books (although the list is there as an appendix). She weaves the books effortlessly into a narrative that takes us back and forth in time and even incorporates the fascinating stories of both of her parents without losing focus. I found It also reinforces what I've always believed: it's more important to read a lot of books than to have an immaculate home. Well done Nina!