" We read to know we're not alone"

Today's challenge: favourite book

There is no way in 10,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years ( that's a lot of zeros even for Brian Cox ) that I could narrow it down to just one book ( good work on suggesting this challenge then Rach ! ).

So I have cheated!

The front cover is one of my all time favourite " thinking books ". I have read this so many times and I just love the fact that it turns statistics and assumptions on it's head. It poses the opposite theory to Occam's Razor ie look beyond the obvious, the most likely reason may not actually be the answer . It combines the brains of sociology and economics and I love it. It's the kind of shennaningans that I adore debating all night, the only downside to being single is that I have no one to talk all this stuff through with at 3 am ( ok maybe my yearning to do such a thing is a " reason " I am single rather than a "downside " ! ) . Anything that switches me on intellectually will always be a favourite.

The back cover is the back cover to one of the most profound reads I have ever got my teeth in to . " The Year of Magical Thinking " by Joan Diddion.
It is about one woman whose grown up daughter is critically ill in ICU and then her husband dies suddenly after a day of them visiting her ( no it's not a rom com ), it discusses grief but in both practical and emotional terms and despite the fact it is called " magical " thinking , the conclusion is that there is no magic answer to grief, as we all know. It is compelling, honest, dark and painful. I read it as someone that has grieved for a dead family member and as someone that has been in ICU, my sister said it was almost word for word what happened to me and I get to read the other side when I read this.


Grief whether it is through death or heartache or inexplicable absence is still grief and sometimes we get some comfort from knowing we are indeed not alone.

The quote as the title from this blip is one of my favourite ever quotes in a film, it is from Shadowlands and Anthony Hopkins says " We read to know we are not alone"

I agree, there is a comfort to be had from being absorbed in the pages of a book when we can empathise, relive or simply escape.

You can't beat reading.

Other books that I could have chosen
Complete works of Shakespeare
Anything by Agatha Christie
Anything by Harlen Coben
Michael Crichton : Prey
Justine Picardie : If the Spirit Moves You
Jane Austen : Pride and Pejudice
Johnathan Tropper " How To Talk to a Widower "
Rich Hall " Things Snowball "
David Baddiel " Whatever Love Means "
Any Viz annual