Alphareader - Danielle Binks

I believed that books might save him because I knew they had so far, and because I knew the people books had saved. They were college professors and actors and scientists and poets. They got to college and sat on dorm floors drinking coffee, amazed they'd finally found their soul mates. They always dressed a little out of season. Their names were enshrined on the pink cards in the pockets of all the forgotten hardbacks in every library basement in America. If the librarians were lazy enough or nostalgic enough or smart enough, those names would stay there forever.

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

First pages back for the forthcoming YA novel ...

I say "There seems to be an alcoholic language and I don't speak it." I have never had an ear for languages, which is yet another reason why I should leave right now. People chuckle knowingly. David smiles. I turn red and mentally scold myself for actually involving myself with these people. Better to sit quietly, avert the eyes. Do not ask the Iranian hijackers for an extra pillow.

'Dry' by Augusten Burroughs 

Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side, and each new day was another book on top.

‘Goodbye Stranger’ by Rebecca Stead

The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day. What had Granma Mary Rommely said? 'To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.'

'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' Betty Smith