little corners

Enjoy these excerpts from the books I read in January.

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One Summer in Savannah

– Terah Shelton Harris

• Forgiveness can also cause more harm than good. It can tighten its grip on you and keep you bound to the person who hurt you.
• But today’s technology makes it possible to hold a place in someone’s life without physically being in it.
• Trauma doesn’t punch a clock, but you can set your watch by it. It works overtime most of the time.
• We’re not all permanently branded with the name of our biggest mistake.
• Science has taught me to believe in the things that can be derived rationally through logic. I have no interest in a God that has to be believed in.
• I’m versed in the art of pretending.
• It is up to us to give reason and purpose to events that would otherwise be meaningless and arbitrary.
• My mind, operating independently from my body, refuses to embrace sleep.
• Sometimes our dreams are manifestations of what our heart wants.
• The rise of a promise not worth the fall of reality.

Sounds Like Love

-Ashley Poston

• I’d forgotten what it felt like to belong somewhere, but there it was–that warm and soft feeling of home.
• When I didn’t have words, there was always a melody that explained my feelings.
• Where a few late-night tourists lingered, bent together like melted Valentine’s Day chocolates.
• It’s easy, pretending that you can summarize someone without getting to know them.
• How did you get over it? Missing your mom? He thought for a moment. “You don’t. At least, I didn’t. I still miss her every day! But some days I miss her more than others. Some days, I’d give up everything for just one of her hugs. And then I have to remind myself that she’s gone, but bits of her stay. The parts that made me, the parts that raised me, the parts she left behind. They all stay, bird. The things that matter always do.”
• Like a storm on the horizon, eventually everything arrived.
• We were all made up of memories, anyway. Of ourselves, of other people. We were built on the songs sung to us and the songs we sang to ourselves, the songs we listened to with broken hearts, and the ones we danced to at weddings.
• We just want to live every day as full as we can, because the only thing that makes grief worse is regret.

The Engineer’s Wife

– Tracey Enerson Wood

• Intention isn’t as important as the words chosen, my dear.
• I wish I cared less, but it’s something ingrained in me.
• The world is full of magic, my dear. You just have to know where to find it.
• A person shouldn’t allow one tragedy to cause yet another.

The Unexpected Diva

– Tiffany L. Warren

• To plan a thing and want a thing is much easier than seeing the thing through completion.
• Let them have rumors and never facts.
• Some choices we feel like we must make, and no one can turn us around from them.

January’s top read

One Summer in Savannah

Terah’s book features a rich and immersive story with complex characters that engage readers, even those they may not initially favor. The setting of Savannah, Georgia, a city full of personal memories for the reader, serves as a perfect backdrop, highlighting its underutilization in storytelling.