Booking Through Thursday: Beautiful Reads

Today I’m going to answer the Booking Through Thursday question. It is a bit late, since it was a holiday weekend here. But I enjoy answering them.

BOOKING THROUGH THURSDAY is a weekly bookish meme about (mostly) books and reading. Each week there is a new question to answer. This week’s question is about ‘beautiful reads’.

“What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever read?”

I always have a problem when asked to pick a superlative - what is the best, what is the funniest , what is the most beautiful. I can make a list of 5 - 10, but I have trouble saying one is the MOST! So today I will just talk about ONE of the most beautiful things I’ve read.

One of the most beautiful passages I’ve read recently comes from the opening of  A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I loved the description of serenity.

“Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn’t fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.”

One of the most beautiful stories I’ve read is The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani. This was partially because of the beautiful descriptions of the Italian country side, but also because the story reminded of the stories I imagine I would have been told if I’d known my Italian ancestors.

Your turn. What is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever read? Leave a comment below, or link to your blog post.