The Intimacy of Reading Out Loud

Photo by Yoab Anderson on Unsplash

One afternoon last spring, my boyfriend was working on a project while I was trying to relax. He had recently gifted me a gorgeous illustrated copy of Anne of Green Gables — my all-time favorite book — and I figured that day would be the best time to start (another) read of the 1908 novel.

I’ve read this book (and the entire eight-book series) something like thirty times. That is not an exaggeration. I have sections memorized. I can picture exactly where on the page a certain sentence is. I love this book so much, I’m working on a collection of essays about how it has changed my life.

Reading Anne of Green Gables should have been an easy, luxurious way for me to spend my day.

But I couldn’t get into it. Instead, I found myself remembering the last time I had read this book years earlier. The previous ten-plus times I had read this book were when I was married to someone else. Someone who I had shared my love of Anne with. Someone who blindsided me, took everything I thought I had and changed my whole life in one conversation.

That had been more than four years earlier, and I hadn’t realized until this exact spring day that it had been that long since I had read my favorite book.

I sat there, trying to get into the first chapter — the first chapter about Mrs. Lynde seeing Matthew ride…