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Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
Audiobook6 hours

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading

Written by Nina Sankovitch

Narrated by Coleen Marlo

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

Nina Sankovitch has always been a reader. As a child, she discovered that a trip to the local bookmobile with her sisters was more exhilarating than a ride at the carnival. Books were the glue that held her immigrant family together. When Nina's eldest sister died at the age of forty-six, Nina turned to books for comfort, escape, and introspection. In her beloved purple chair, she rediscovered the magic of such writers as Toni Morrison, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ian McEwan, Edith Wharton, and, of course, Leo Tolstoy. Through the connections Nina made with books and authors (and even other readers), her life changed profoundly, and in unexpected ways. Reading, it turns out, can be the ultimate therapy.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair also tells the story of the Sankovitch family: Nina's father, who barely escaped death in Belarus during World War II; her four rambunctious children, who offer up their own book recommendations while helping out with the cooking and cleaning; and Anne-Marie, her oldest sister and idol, with whom Nina shared the pleasure of books, even in her last moments of life. In our lightning-paced culture that encourages us to seek more, bigger, and better things, Nina's daring journey shows how we can deepen the quality of our everyday lives—if we only find the time.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateFeb 5, 2013
ISBN9780062270474
Author

Nina Sankovitch

Nina Sankovitch is the acclaimed author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, selected by Oprah as a “book to read now,” and a contributing writer for the Huffington Post. She is married and lives in Connecticut.

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Reviews for Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

Rating: 3.526530689387755 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

245 ratings39 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'll admit I bought Tolstoy and the Purple Chair because the title got to me. It's the story of trying to heal from the grief of losing a sister by reading a book a day for a year. The book tracks the healing process, some general thoughts on life and very short descriptions of some of the books read. I love the idea of reading a book a day but since I don't read at 70 pages per hour like the author, there's little hope I could do that for more than the occasional completely free day. There are some lovely passages in the book but all by all, it's not one I would recommend highly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had wanted to read this memoir for quite some time and I finally had a chance to pick the book up on a discount. It was well worth the wait as I found the story inspiring on both a personal level, and on a level of giving books an important place in our lives. This was the type of story that made me think about my life, but also made me want to read more than I ever have before. The idea that the author used the books she read every day as a way to cope with loss in her life is both satisfying and a tool for others to learn from. Good stuff and recommended to all lovers of books.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After the death of her sister, 40-something Nina Sankovitch is lost, lost without her best friend, confidant, and reading partner in crime. In an effort to find, not only herself, but some part of the sister she adored, Nina takes on an audacious challenge. She will read one book a day for one year. 365 books. And she will do it come what may; sickness, health, tennis matches at the US Open, or high-water. With the reading comes new friends and old, laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, pain and healing. Through her books Nina finds healing and finds her life changing in profound and unexpected ways.Weaved in throughout Nina?s reading are stories of her parents who survived WWII and the horrors they faced juxtaposed with the horror of loosing her dear sister far too young to a fast moving and devastating cancer. Endlessly fascinating and touching, these stories of Nina and her family?s past and present come together to show and new and interesting path to living in a world where people live and die.Honestly, I?m surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I normally shy away from books where someone has cancer (the wound is still too fresh? I don?t know) but Nina Sankovitch gently drew me in with her friendly voice. She doesn?t hold back on her pain, fear, and confusion but she does it in such away that it doesn?t overwhelm. And her journey to healing, despite being impossible for most people (really, who can take a year off to read a book everyday? Not this chick) there is a lot of things to take away from her story. The healing power of words, they have found a champion in Nina Sankovitch.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Book-A-Day concept, while initially odd, was tempting reading the firs time through many years ago;now, it is just too sad with so many intervening deaths.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A lovely, easy to read short memoir of the therapeutic effects of a year spent reading a book a day. Avid readers and book lovers will completely understand the sentiment and healing balm provided by complete immersion in the world of each book.Not a book I will keep in my home library but a nice, well-written light read!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting, thoughtful memoir; more memoir than book review, as expected. Some great quotes sprinkled throughout. My only slight hesitation was with the whole concept of reading a book a day for an entire year. Goodness knows I have read and read to the exclusion of all else and it is a great temporary escape from whatever is getting you down, but the thought of doing it for a whole year is a bit scary. For depression, we know that physical exercise, tackling a small task a day, seeing a counselor are all proven methods of dragging oneself out of the mire. The thought of 365 days of reading in a chair (purple or not) when there are children to be hugged and animals to be petted, dinner to be made (OK maybe not...)would be enough to drive me batty.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loss of a loved one is devastating, and when it shatters the illusion of control for a person who needed to believe she is in control of her life, something must be done. Doing more of everything didn't work, so a year of reading a book a day becomes the plan. It's seems to have helped. Nina Sankovitch is good at telling her story and getting her points across, but it felt like being repeatedly given different flavors of the same sherbet over and over. While not disdaining good sherbet, I prefer custard, crème brûlée, actually.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I'm sure most people will disagree with my rating, but I was not enthralled and I'm not into grieving for people (family, friends, or otherwise) who have suffered a prolonged painful death.After the author's sister died at the age of forty-six of bile duct cancer, the author turned her life in to a race to do as much living as possible...Upon the author turning forty-six, she spent the entire year reading & reviewing one book a day...I found the book not to be about her "Magical Year of Reading" but of the homage to her sister & her sister's death.At the beginning of the book we learn about her parents' lives before they emigrated to the u.s. Early on the book for some confusing reason repeats itself, I had to check the pagination to make sure I had indeed passed from page 27 to page 28, rather than re-reading a previous paragraph.So this book is about how reading helped the author through her grief; although I certainly could happily have gone without reading this book and the burden.The book felt as if it was a form of therapy for the author and I was the therapist....
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Every so often, a reader can't help but form an instant connection with an author. Especially when they share a passion for the same things. That's just what has happened with me and the author Nina Sankovitch. These two books delve into two of my favorite things -- a love of reading and a fascination with old letters.Imagine the chats we could have over a cup of tea...Ms. Sankovitch lost her beloved sister, Ann-Marie, to cancer at age 46. Reading was a lifelong passion for them both. During Ann-Maire's final months in the hospital, Ms. Sankovitch read aloud to her -- spending as much time together as possible during her last days.After her sister's death and overcome with grief, Nina decides that the same passion that bonded her with her sister and carried her through her life will be her therapy. She will read a book a day for a year. A book a day, I wondered? Even I, a voracious reader, can't compete with a book a day. These were her rules:• She would read only one book per author,• She would not re-read any books she had already read,• She would limit her choices to books that were no more than one inch thick, ensuring that they would, for the most part, be in the range of 250-300 pages each,• And she would only read the kind of books she and her sister, Anne-Marie would have enjoyed together.For those of us who want to read about what someone else is reading, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair takes us on her journey, as she reads from her favorite purple chair. She shares her epiphanies and discoveries -- all from the pages of her carefully chosen books. She intersperses her bookish insights with memories of her sister and of growing up in a bookish immigrant family who instilled in her the belief that books are not a luxury, but a necessity.Never fear, this is not a grim tale of a painful year, nor is it an instruction manual for grieving. Ms. Sankovitch gives us a book straight from her heart, full of hope and wisdom. It's about stopping the merry-go-round of a busy life to read, think and learn.This book will appeal to any bibliophile, but especially for those of us who turn to books for answers, comfort and wisdom.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    And another half a star. I really did enjoy it but it wasn't what I was expecting which may be why it's not a four.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nina Sankovitch has been reading her whole life. Her parents and two sisters were also very avid readers.Nina loses her sister, Anne-Marie to cancer, and takes life devastatingly hard, going all out to make sure that she encompasses everything that life offer like running, going at all speeds.She comes to the conclusion that she is going to take a year and read a book a day, to try and bring her sorrow to some kind of conclusion.Nina shares with us some of the philosophies that she acquires during her reading a book a day and they seemed to have worked for her in her grief from losing her sister.While I understood having to deal with grief in your own way, I don't think that I could have dealt with it in the same manner. I read, have always read, but my turn to books is as an escape from the normal and the opportunity to escape into someone else's story and put my own away for a short period of time.Kudos to Nina for using the tool that made her deal with her grief in her way and for sharing that with us.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this book. I can see myself reading a book a day for a year. The author lost her sister to cancer and this is such a healing journey for her. I loved reading how each book she read took her a step closer to coming to terms with her grief. I too found a trip to the Bookmobile more exciting than a carnival so I felt we were kindred spirits from the moment I picked this book up. This book also tells many stories of the author's family; her children, her father's time in WWII, her sisters, and of course her fascinations with reading. The author encourages us to read and take time to seek the bigger and better things. To slow down in this world of such fast paced motion. The author has a website called ReadAllDay.org which she launched after reading her book a day. It was fascinating to read how Nina managed her family, her life, cooking meals, driving here and there and also fitting in a book a day. It seems she did this without neglecting those responsibilities. From the description of her library, to her purple reading chair, the writing is wonderful. If you are a bibliophile, read this book. If you just want to slow down and enjoy all life has to give, read this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    After her sister Anne-Marie died of cancer, Nina Sankovitch spent three years being as busy as she could, volunteering, being a mom to her four boys, and comforting her family. But the day comes when she knows she must face her grief: to do that, she chooses to back off from her busy life and read a book a day for a year.A book a day for a year? Isn't that a little... selfish? Well, yes - and no. Nina admits that she was in a bit of a unique place in being able to do so; she is a fast reader and was not working at the time. She essentially treated that book a day as her job, and wrote about each book read on her blog, readallday.org. In Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, she discusses many of the titles that touch her and teach her about living life, and how she deals with her grief over Anne-Marie by delving into a passion they both shared: books and reading. I found myself nodding along with her and thinking about my own reading and the way a book can change a life. Because much like Will Schwalbe says in The End of Your Life Book Club (I'm totally paraphrasing), reading isn't an escape from life it really is living. Highly recommended for any book lover.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5


    "Even when I read a book where the story had nothing to do with an experience of my own, I found resonance from recovered memories, and an escape from the present."

    A book a day for one year - that's the goal Nina set for herself. I picked this book up for the book suggestions but I read it for the insights. When her sister dies she thinks that all the things people say about it getting easier and how they know how she feels are lies. As she works her way through 365 books she realizes that books connect us to others and to ourselves.

    "Not only were books carrying me away on escapades of new experiences but the people and places and atmospheres created by authors were also bringing me back to those times in my life where I looked forward to tomorrow."

    February 2012
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When Nina Sankovitch lost her elder sister Anne-Marie to stomach cancer, she also lost the person with whom she most regularly shared new books and authors. Sankovitch, her two sisters, and her brother were lucky to have grown up in a home in which books were so appreciated, but now one of them would be missing from the conversation. It was only after three years of living life at a frantic pace in which she tried to live both for herself and for Anne-Marie that Sankovitch finally decided to try something different in order to deal with her grief. She would read a book per day for the next 365 days – and she would spend two or three hours writing a formal review of each and every one of those books. Believe it or not, she did it - Tolstoy and the Purple Chair tells us how she managed it and what she gained in the process.From the beginning, Sankovitch set a few firm rules for herself:•She would read only one book per author,•She would not re-read any books she had already read,•She would limit her choices to books that were no more than one inch thick, ensuring that they would, for the most part, be in the range of 250-300 pages each,•And she would only read the kind of books she and Anne-Marie would have likely enjoyed together if her sister were still alive.In Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, Nina Sankovitch devotes time to Anne-Marie’s story, to what it was like growing up in her family, to how she dealt with her sister’s death both before and after beginning her reading year, and to many of the 365 books she read that year. Reading enthusiasts will be intrigued by the book choices that Sankovitch made during the year, as well as by how often, and how regularly, she was able to find something in those books that spoke to her personally about the grieving process. Readers seeking new ideas about dealing with the grief associated with the loss of a family member are likely to be equally enthusiastic about the Tolstoy and the Purple Chair because Sankovitch is frank and open about her own experiences following Anne-Marie’s death – starting with the question that so often haunted her: “Why do I deserve to live?”Coming in to her year of reading, Sankovitch knew exactly how lucky she was that her family was willing to support her effort to find comfort through such a time-consuming project. As she says in the book’s second chapter:“For years, books had offered me a window into how other people deal with life, its sorrows and joys and monotonies and frustrations. I would look there again for empathy, guidance, fellowship, and experience. Books would give me all that, and more…I was trusting books to answer the relentless question of why I deserved to live. And how I should live. My year of reading would be my escape back into life.”She found what she was searching for.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For LTer's this book is just a confirmation of something we already know, books are places we can go to escape the real world, if only for a few hours a day. Author Nina Sankovitch, along with reading a book a day also created a blog documenting and reviewing her thoughts on each book. In so doing, she became connected to people all over the world who shared her love of books. Sound familiar? She relates that through her blog "Threads of friendship entwine over the shared enjoyment of a book. If later a book is shared that is not so mutually enjoyed, the friendship survives." Well, as it turns out, that by reading a book a day, usually around 1 inch in thickness, she is able to remember what she's shared with her sister and how she continues to live through memories carried in the minds of those who loved her. Nice book. Little self serving but a nice way to get through a difficult time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved this book about a woman's journey dealing with the death of her sister through reading a book every day for an entire year.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I was expecting a tale of all the books she read in that year together with some commentary about her life, something along the lines of [The Whole Five Feet]. Maybe her blog was like that (I still haven't checked), but this book certainly isn't. It's a tale of family love & loss, & everything that led up to reading a book every day for a year, & how books are woven into all of it.It was much more beautiful than I expected.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    After Nina’s sister passes away at age 46, she decides to read a book every single day for a year. It was an effort to process her emotions and find something to focus on during that difficult time. The book is really a meditation is grief and memories of her sister. I wasn’t quite expecting a book on grieving and though it was a raw and intimate look at what she went through, I felt like it wasn’t quite what it proclaimed itself to be. I was expecting a little more about the actual books she was reading.I did love her thoughts on the importance of reading, the way it is both an escape and a way to ground ourselves. For anyone that sees reading as a permanent part of your life and something you love, it’s easy to see it becoming your focus when other aspects feel as though they are spinning out of control. I wish she’d talk a bit more about the actual challenges of reading a book each day and how that affected her enjoyment of each one. Did she find herself craving certain books or wishing for a day off? Did she wish she could sit and read a huge novel over the course of a week, but feel like she couldn’t because she had to move on to the next one? Regardless, it’s an inspiring endeavor and one that it would be incredible to attempt one day! “We all need a space to just let things be, a place to remember who we are and what is important to us, an interval of time that allows the happiness and joy of living back into our consciousness.”  
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nina Sankovitch lost her sister to cancer and immediately started running. (Metaphorically.) As if she could just keep herself and her family moving fast enough to somehow escape the pain and loss. As it sinks in that this isn't a terrifically effective coping mechanism -- an idea takes hold of her. Books have been so important to her for her entire life,, and important in her relationship with her sister. She will read and review one book every day for one year. 365 books for 365 days.

    That sounds like heaven. Until I just now suddenly realized that I'm pretty sure she only read fiction. A full year of reading only fiction? Now I'm sickly horrified.

    Okay, my own personal proclivities aside, I did really enjoy this book. Meditations on how books shape us, shape our relationships, shape our understanding of the world. How even "trashy" genre fiction can lead to profound insights. How processing the lives of others through fiction can ease our grief, remind us of purpose, and give perspective.

    At times the depth of the author's grief made me wonder if I hadn't made a poor choice for a vacation read. But it was redemptive, in the end. In fact, I've already passed this copy on, to a friend and fellow reader I was vacationing with. (A chapter on lending and borrowing books with friends was perhaps my favorite chapter in the book. Thanks for the recommendation, Emma!)
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A great book for readers: everyone will find Sankovitch's thoughts on how books relate to one's life ring close to home. What was especially interesting here was her juxtaposition of her reading life with her mental life, as reading allowed her time to quiet down and process the death of her sister.

    All readers who love literature will relate to Sankovitch's love for books; everyone will also come away from this wanting to read many books Sankovitch details and which may have passed one's radar or been long-forgotten in a pile somewhere. The one thing that permeated the entire book, and which I found especially classist (as if this book were directed only toward those privileged enough to be in circumstances like Sankovitch's), was that this is not a book for all people who love to read.

    This is solely the story of one woman who can afford to live on her husband's income for an entire year to read a book each day, and to also relinquish her two children to her husband's care to not "disturb" her book-a-day project. For that alone—and this is an attitude and sentiment that runs throughout the book, this sense of privilege and socioeconomic stability—the book may feel alien and too much like an unlivable fantasy to many avid readers who are not as lucky and financially secure as Sankovitch.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Sitting in my chair, cats nearby, I was reading a great book. That was my job this year, and it was a good one. The salary was nonexistent, but the satisfaction was daily and deep." I'm very late to the game with this one - particularly given the fact that my copy is an ARC! - but every book has its moment, and I think that perhaps if I'd read it too soon I'd have been disappointed. Fortunately, other reviews warned me to shift my expectations about the book's focus, so I actually really enjoyed it, if not for the reasons I thought I would. Basically, the premise is that Nina Sankovitch read a book a day for a year in a kind of mission to recover from the death of her beloved sister Anne-Marie. Previous to this 'year of magical reading', she had spent several years running round like a maniac trying to live a double life, not only to make up for her sister's tragically shortened existence, but also as an attempt to buoy up her grieving family. At length she realised that this approach wasn't helping anybody, and instead opted to sit down and read - a favourite pastime that she shared with her late sister - and use the lessons in her books to gradually grieve, heal, and find happiness in her memories instead of pain. My big issue with the book was the fact that all the publicity I'd seen beforehand - the same publicity that led me to acquire this ARC in the first place - was very much focussed on the 'reading a book a day for 365 days' element, complete with photos of Sankovitch reading in the park, on the porch, on the titular purple chair... In short, it was being marketed as a kind of stunt memoir (love) about reading and books (LOVE!). In actual fact, it could have been a book a week, or a book a month, and the memoir wouldn't have suffered much for it. There is an awful lot about the content of some of the books Sankovitch chose, and what she learned from them, and how she applied these things specifically to the experience of losing her sister. There is NOT an awful lot about the actual experience of reading a book, where and how she managed to read a book every single day, and what she enjoyed about the luxury of just reading. That said, I really did enjoy it, even if I don't remember many specifics now, a few weeks on. I underlined lots of quotes about reading, and took away a few book recommendations (though not many - Sankovitch and I don't really have very similar reading tastes and I'd never heard of most of her choices) - but the overriding impression I have is of a book about family, grief, and learning to live again after the loss of a loved one. If I had a friend, say, who loved to read and had lost someone, I'd definitely buy them a copy because despite not having experienced it myself yet (touch wood), I think in that situation I'd have found the book reassuring and heartwarming and quite comforting in a lot of ways. As an avid reader, there's a certain poetry to finding solace in a book about finding solace in books! Conclusions? Well, it wasn't the book I thought it would be, and I did think it was a bit misleading that it was being marketed heavily on the book-memoir side, but I still really enjoyed it. It was a great reminder of how much books can influence us, our moods and the way we think; it was a lovely tribute to a sister with whom Sankovitch had shared her love of books right up until her death, and there WERE a few nice readerly moments that made me feel like I was in the company of a fellow book addict. Cautiously recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After a few years of living "frantically" in the wake of her sister's sudden death from cancer, Sankovitch decided to slow down and read one book a day for a year. This becomes her solace and her healing process for the loss of someone very dear to her, and the memoir that resulted is sustaining, if uneven. Sankovitch writes convincingly about the real power of books and reading to touch people and change their lives in hundreds of little (and sometimes a few big) ways. She effortlessly weaves stories about her family and her past into her memoir of reading, and the passages about how her books and her family slowly bring her to a better acceptance of her loss are marvelous. However, the move from talking about life to discussing the ins-and-outs of a particular books is sometimes jarring, and some personal information is repeated from chapter to chapter without any sense that the narrative realizes that this is not new information. Not a wholly satisfying book, as these little infelicities are enough to detract a bit from the experience, but still an entertaining, fulfilling, and uplifting read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nina Sankovitch loses her sister to cancer, and as part of her grieving, decides to read a book a day for a year. She sets up rules for this adventure (1" thick spine so as not to get too long, no repeat reads, and no reads by the same author), and also blogs her reviews of each book. Somehow, she will do this, as well as run a household with a husband and 4 boys. The concept behind it was wonderful - I would love to be able to curl up each day and read a book. I'm sure it was also quite therapeutic to not only step away from reality, but to give her a time to think and reflect about time with her sister. The problem that I had with this book was actually in the way it was written. Sankovitch breaks the book into chapters that are all there to teach a lesson. She then references books and lines throughout each chapter to support her lesson. It actually read more like a college essay than a memoir to me as a result. Vocabulary is good - you can tell she is an intelligent person, but the storyline seems choppy with the chapter breakdowns. One of the lessons that she writes about has to do with book recommendations and sharing of books. I have to agree with her wholeheartedly on this point - It truly IS difficult to suggest a book to someone, and hope that they experience it in the same way you did. I loved her commentary about her sisters sharing books ~ what a great family memory to have!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Following the death of her elder sister Anne-Marie from cancer at the age of forty-six, Nina Sankovitch found comfort by reading a book a day for a year. That much I knew before I started to read, and I was expecting a book predominantly focused on the books read and the reading experience, with an element of family memoir included. Instead, what I got was exactly the reverse, a family memoir interspersed with brief discursions into books. And a family memoir particularly focused on the sister and Nina's relationship with her. And therein lies the problem for me: Nina Sankovitch clearly adored her sister but she presents her as such an unremitting paragon of virtue that it is difficult to see her as a real person. Paragraphs such as this convey the feel: 'But Anne-Marie became my gold standard of achievement, the one whose approval I sought even more than my parents'. Up she went on a pedestal, and for me, she never really came  down again.'I was reminded of Anne-Marie in the characters I was meeting in all of my books. She was the kind of heroine authors like to put in their books, with her quiet strength and resilience, her utter lack of petty or trivial concerns, and the superlative combination of her beauty and her intelligence.' Clearly, to lose a sister or any close relative or friend at the age of forty-six is very sad, but Sankovitch comes over as so self-indulgent in her grief that she completely lost my sympathy. I know this sounds cruel and heartless, but after fifty pages I just wanted to tell her to stop thinking about herself all the time and pull herself together. But her focus on the dead Anne-Marie even three years after her death is so complete that there seems to be very little thought left for anyone else: either for her husband whose own sister had died in the same year, or for her four children.So not a good read for me, and particularly so coming so soon after reading [And When Did You Last See Your Father],  which, by giving a portrait of the dying man as a real human being with all his faults and foibles, succeeded in portraying a much more moving and rawer account of death and grief.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Short little book about the moving and emotional power of the act of reading. Very comforting read, and with plenty of good suggestions for reads.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am sure that serious readers everywhere are by now well aware of Nina Sankovitch's story of how her beloved oldest sister died way too young of cancer at the age of forty-six, and that this book, TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR: MY YEAR OF MAGICAL READING, is all about how she finally used her love of books and reading to find her way back to a kind of understanding and getting on with her own life following this tragedy. While I know I could never match her extraordinary accomplishment of reading and reviewing a book a day, and wouldn't even try, I knew I was gonna like this book from the time I read this line on page six - "Our family was different from other families. Our house had more books, more art, and more dust than anyone else's."Yes! When there are good books waiting, damn the dust! I knew then that Nina (and her family) and I were kindred souls in our unapologetic love - and lust - for good books and good writing. Sankovitch makes the point over and over in this beautifully written memoir that good books help us to know more and more about what it is to be human.There are a lot of things I could probably write about how I related to what Nina had to say here. But I'll just say this. Remember the kid in your high school English class who never did his homework and when the teacher asked him, right after you had given your answer, what he thought about the significance of, say, the witches in Hamlet? He was the kid who always just kinda shuffled and mumbled and pointed at you and said, "I was gonna say what he said."It's not that I didn't do my homework. Like Nina, I am an absolutely unrepentant and unreformed lover of books. I loved the detailed lists at the end of her book. From them and from those mentioned in the text, I've made my own list. And I've probably read, or at least know of close to half of those books. But the thing is I pretty much agreed with most of what Nina Sankovitch tells us about the redeeming importance of books in our lives, so I'm just gonna say, "Yeah, what she said." I loved this book. It is filled with wisdom. If you love books, so will you. I recommend it highly. Thank you, Nina.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sankovitch understands the connection between life and literature. She does a beautiful job of making it clear why we read and what we gain from reading. Her comments on love, dying, childhood, memory, and enthusiasm are triggered by the books she read, but it is her response to those books that makes this a worthwhile read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    From books to blog and back again, Nina Sankovitch chronicles her “year of magical reading” in TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR. In describing it that way, Sankovitch intentionally references Joan Didion’s THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING; this is a time of healing from loss, as she turns to books--reading one each day, every day for one year, and writing about it on her blog Read All Day--to help her make sense of life following the death of her beloved sister from an aggressive form of cancer.If you didn’t know what was motivating Nina to undertake this project, it would be easy to envy this stay-at-home mother of four sons for having the luxury of spending the bulk of her days reading and blogging for an entire year. And once you DO know her motivation for it...well, it’s still hard not to be just a LITTLE envious, but that’s greatly tempered by compassion. This isn’t a vacation--Nina is not taking a year off from her family or domestic responsibilities to bury herself in books. It’s not a vague, idealistic quest for “self-improvement” either--this is FOCUSED, or as she describes it, “intense.” This is reading as therapy--and it seems to have been pretty effective therapy, at that.TOLSTOY... is an engaging and inspiring read. While it’s a chronicle of an endeavor fueled by sad circumstances, it’s also a record of accomplishment. Nina actually manages to read 365 books in one year, at the rate of one per day, and write about them all, but that’s really all in service of a larger goal; books are her tools. At the end of that year, working with the tools she’s chosen, she’s gained insight and understanding about how to keep living and loving and moving forward. She discusses selected, personally significant books in some detail, but this isn’t so much a “book about books” as it is a book about one particular thoughtful, articulate reader’s personal journey through one transformative year, which has a narrative arc of its own.While not exactly a book about books, TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR IS a book about reading, and it’s clearly a book FOR READERS. The idea of using books to help process a significant life event--not strictly looking for information, but seeking emotional truth in stories both real and fictional--makes perfect sense to a reader. It’s something many of us probably have done, or would do under equally personally-challenging conditions, even if we couldn’t devote a full year exclusively to it. However, as readers, we can appreciate that Nina Sankovitch did, and chose to share her story; it’s evidence of the life-changing power of books...literally.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Although the reason for this book is far from joyous, the death of her sister at the age of 46, this book is a celebration of reading, memories and understanding. After her sister's death, the author is running around taking care of her four children, her husband and her house, trying to figure out what to do with her grief and how to go on without the presence of her sister. They had always hared their lobe of books, her sister loved mysteries, in fact books and reading were always a big part of her family's lives. She rakes on a quest to read a book a day for a year, hoping to learn from books how to find joy again. Reading the books she comes to remember what books provide in the way of comfort and friendship, connection and understanding. Loved this book and reading her opinions of the books she read. She touched on her parent's lives in Belgium and Poland, the horror her dad encountered losing his three siblings in one night. She includes a reading list at the back of the book, some of these I have read, some I want to read and some I probably never will but I loved seeing what she was reading.