Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.

Book Girl Discussion Question #6: In chapter 3, the author says ‘We understand our worlds through the words we are given.’ Can you think of a time when a passage from a book gave you empathy for or a deeper understanding of a person or situation in your life?

So many.

I recently read a couple of books by Western author Elmer Kelton, and although they are set back around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, they gave me an understanding of my own daddy and my grandfather that I didn’t have before, even though neither of them was a cowboy or anything like it. They were “good old boys” in their own way.

Hillbilly Elegy is another book that made me see my own family and upbringing and ancestry in a new way—I am a hillbilly from the flatlands of West Texas.

I also read The Borrowed House by Hilda van Stockum, bout a girl who is trained and educated as a Hitler Youth, and I was reminded of how difficult it is to transcend the limits of our childhood indoctrination and how we have to learn whom we can trust to tell the truth.

I understood the sharp pain of a prodigal son from my reading of Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, long before I experienced my own children growing older and making choices that I mourned and prayed over.

I understand a little of what it’s like to be a pastor in a small church from reading Jan Karon’s Mitford series and Bob DeGray’s We Never Stood Alone.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson gave me some insight into what it feels like to be an African American man in twenty-first century America.

Several books I’ve read, including those of Torey Hayden and Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin and Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, gave me some empathy and understanding of what it’s like to be autistic or to live with an autistic person.

Even though I didn’t get the pet-loving gene, I understand that some people do love their dogs and cats dearly because I’ve read James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small and other books about the bond between a pet-owner and his or her pet.

No Graven Image by Elizabeth Elliott gave me insight into the life of a missionary and made me realize that the missionaries I know are real people not cardboard saints.

I could go on, but obviously I’m a more understanding and sympathetic person because of the many lives I’ve explored through reading both fiction and nonfiction. What have you read that made you understand something or someone in your life better?