An Unread Diary

Sometimes unread books on a shelf are as good as a diary entry to jog the memory. You look at the spine of a novel you bought twenty years ago at the Strand bookstore in New York. Remember you were with so and so that day. You hadn’t seen them for a long time. They didn’t want to go to the store but did you a favor when you said you only needed a few minutes to see if that book was there. You’d read very positive reviews. Later you had good pastrami sandwiches for lunch and talked about…

You’ve never felt the urge to read the book although maybe one day you still will. But having it up there on the shelf, well, that’s something else. A reminder, a paper souvenir — the pages a little yellow and bent now after all this time — of a small good day in your life.