The Making of #106
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
I was once chatting with the owner of a bead shop in town, and somehow the conversation turned, as so many conversations I’m involved in, from beads to books, particularly books that had changed our lives. I have had the luck to have a few of these at different points in my life. She, however, had one: “My Name Is Asher Lev,” by Chaim Potok. She couldn’t tell me how, exactly, but she had a faraway look in her eyes that I didn’t quite understand. I wrote the title down, stuffed the paper in my pockets, made my purchases, and forgot about it until the next laundry day.
When I was cleaning out my pockets, I found the slip of paper. With nothing better to do while my clothes were in the wash, I ordered the book from Amazon. It happened to arrive on one of my days off, right after I’d finished downloading some songs I’d never heard.
I put on my iPod and settled on my back porch to see what kind of book this was that would change this woman’s life. A particularly good song had come on, so I put the iPod on repeat.
Seven hours later, with Devotchka’s “How It Ends” serving as a soundtrack the entire time, I finished the book. And I could see what she meant.