Books are my fortune-tellers

Books hold the wisdom of the world that cannot be held by time. Time is fleeting. Thoughts are transient. But books...words on paper...they last. They transcend.

And the wisdom held in books has the capacity to morph -- to bend to the reader's need.

I can pull a book off the shelf and read it 15 years after the first perusal, and in its pages I will find fresh meaning and a new kind of expectation. I may ultimately know the end, but the journey, the part that really counts, will be fully changed to accommodate who I have become as a reader...and a person.

I have a tendency to write in my books. I know for some this is sacrilege, but to me, it is communion -- a close conversation with the writer...the character. It is how I talk to the book, and how I lay a foundation for later re-reading. And it's one of the things I like best about used books - knowing someone else has been there before, touching those words with their eyes, hoping to find something.

So, when I draw a book from the shelf, let it fall open, and run my eyes along the page until I find it...the word or phrase or quote that stops me...I think it makes sense to call it "fortune-telling". Words are precious...and because of this, books are gold mines...a place where a reader can make a fortune in thoughts.

Today's book fortune comes from Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch: