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The librarian in Bangor handed me a book I didn't ask for and it wrecked me in one sitting
Three weeks ago I was killing time at a used book sale in a church basement in Bangor, Maine, mostly just looking for old paperbacks with cool covers. This older librarian volunteering there watched me skip past the whole literary fiction table and she pulled a thin novel off a cart behind her and just put it in my hands without a word. It was a copy of "The Remains of the Day" with a cracked spine and someone's name written inside in blue ink. I almost set it back down because I never read that kind of stuff, but she said "You look like someone who skips the good parts on purpose" and walked off. I started it that night just to prove her wrong and by 2 in the morning I was sitting on my kitchen floor crying over a guy who never said how he felt to a woman he worked with for decades. The whole book is basically a guy driving around England telling himself he made the right choices when you can tell he didn't, and it got me thinking about every time I've done the same thing. Since then I've started reading one book I'd never pick on my own every month, has anyone else had a stranger basically assign them a book that broke them? What was it?
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