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How to Read a Book

A Novel

Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: At least 6 months
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: At least 6 months

""The perfect pick to really light a fire under my book club, and yours....A reminder that goodness, and books, can still win in this world."" —New York Times Book Review

""A beautiful, big-hearted treasure of a novel."" —Lily King

National Bestseller * From the award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy comes a heartfelt, uplifting novel about a chance encounter at a bookstore, exploring redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.

Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle...

Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.

Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest.

Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn't yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.

When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.

How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.

""A deeply humane and touching novel; highly recommended for book clubs and fans of Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures."" — Booklist

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Eileen Stevens's openhearted performance will warm listeners to the core and inspire a sense of the true goodness in the world. Violet Powell is determined to make the most of her second chance after getting out of prison in Maine. She vows she won't be the sum of her worst act--killing a woman while driving drunk. She finds two unexpected allies in Harriet, the volunteer book club moderator at the prison, and Frank, the elderly widow of the woman Violet killed. As chapters alternate between Violet, Harriet, and Frank, Stevens adopts subtle shifts in tone and emphasis that reveal the core values and uncertainties of each character. Violet gets a job at a lab with African gray parrots, and Stevens has a wonderful time voicing the parrots, which leads to plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. A.B. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

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  • English

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