Are you a good reader?

My great-grandmother Rose loved to read. Not best-sellers, mind you, or - god forbid! - romance novels. No, Rose was drawn to the real deal: literary fiction, classics, stories of human complexity and conflict limned in lapidary prose. Too poor to attend college, she became a self-taught, life-long English major: she organized book clubs, sought out teachers, befriended librarians. She read fearlessly, open to (and fascinated by) lives and worlds far from her own. She shared her love of books with my Mama. Many of Rose's favorites now line our shelves: Virginia Woolf, Proust, Isak Dineson, Thomas Wolfe, Doris Lessing, Anais Nin.

Rose thrilled to meet kindred souls who shared her passion for books. These "good readers" became lifelong friends.

I think we would have hit it off.

And yes, I am named after her.