The Old Composition Book

Upon graduating from college - when the days of required reading were behind me - I started a list of all the books I read strictly for pleasure: fiction, biographies, and non-fiction. The first entry was The Web and the Rock by Thomas Wolfe, dated June 1959. I kept that list in one of those black-and-white composition books, (remember the ones with the multiplication tables on the back cover?). The list stops after a few hundred books in December 1983, Growing Up by Russell Baker.

I found that little notebook recently when I was trying to remember when I had read Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale. I knew I had loved it and was thinking about reading it again. There it was, April 1960, sandwiched between Irwin Shaw’s Two Weeks in Another Town and A. J. Cronin’s The Northern Light.

Today I finished The Old Wives’ Tale again and know why it was such a sensation when it was published in 1908. And I understand why I first loved it. Of course, now that I am fifty years older, I am, I think, better able to understand the lives of the two sisters, Constance and Sophia.

Have you ever wondered why you’re drawn to certain books? I wonder if my desire to read the story of two sisters at this particular time stems from my loss of my sister Nan in June. Throughout the book I found myself comparing Constance and Sophia’s personalities, thoughts and actions to my sister and me.