How to Read a Book

By Monica Wood




How to Read a Book - Monica Wood
  • Title: How to Read a Book
  • By: Monica Wood
  • Release Date: 2024-05-07
  • Genre: Fiction & Literature
    Ratings: 4.5 From 330 Reviews

More by Monica Wood : How to Read a Book


Related Books



"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


Search



Recent Posts
These Summer Storms
The Scent Keeper
The River Is Waiting (Oprah's Book Club)
The View From Lake Como
My Friends
Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)
Culpability (Oprah’s Book Club, July 2025)
Atmosphere: A GMA Book Club Pick
The Huntress
Fire Ice
The Next Ship Home
The Wedding People
Spectacular Things: Reese's Book Club
Pelican Girls
The Blue Hour
Every Summer After
Sandwich
Tom Lake
Diary of an Oxygen Thief
The Last Anniversary
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Wicked
Cold Mountain
The Frozen River: A GMA Book Club Pick
The God of the Woods
The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits
The Coast Road
The Women
The Story She Left Behind
Wild Dark Shore
All the Colors of the Dark: A Read with Jenna Pick
The Obituary Writer
The Woman in Cabin 10
The Scottish Prisoner
A Mother's Love
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
James (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
The Breakaway
The Lost Apothecary
The Book Club for Troublesome Women
The High Country
The Emperor of Gladness: Oprah's Book Club
Last Twilight in Paris
The Nightingale
The Midnight Library: A GMA Book Club Pick
Remarkably Bright Creatures
The Secret Keeper of Main Street
Welcome to Beach Town
Heartwood (A Read with Jenna Pick)
Rejection
Park Avenue Summer
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
Stuart Woods' Finders Keepers
Aftertaste
The Lion Women of Tehran
I Am of Irelaunde
Finding Grace
The Foretelling
The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau
The Girl in the Letter
Crescent Dawn
The Island of Sea Women
The Long Walk
The Last Letter
Hidden Nature
Here One Moment
Before We Were Yours
Parable of the Sower
The Correspondent
Beartown
The Alchemist
Big Summer
The Great Alone
Vera, or Faith
Magic Hour
Presumed Guilty
East of Eden (Original Classic Editions)
Creation Lake
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
The Compound: A GMA Book Club Pick
Fox
The Book of Lost Names
The Silo Series Collection
The Five-Star Weekend
Points North
Isola: Reese's Book Club
The Dream Hotel: A Read with Jenna Pick
Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books
The Story Collector
The Berry Pickers
Winter Garden
The Names: A Read with Jenna Pick
City of Night Birds
Lessons in Chemistry
So Big
Demon Copperhead
Sunny Side Up
Yours Truly
Ordinary Grace
Night Road