Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch

I first heard of Nina Sankovitch more than a year ago when I read a feature in the New York Times about her blog, readallday.org. Sankovitch an Evanston, Ill., native and now a Connecticut resident, was reading and reviewing online a book a day for one year. I began checking her blog occasionally, found good reading tips and decided to start my own blog.

With a full-time job and a preteen daughter, I couldn't read a book a day, but I could read more and share my thoughts with others. Writing about literature forces us to think about what we have read. Does it relate to our lives? Does it teach us about others? Does it take us to places we have never been and may never go? Does it take us to places we may never want to go? Does it help us deal with the trials that we all face at one time or another? Yes to all.

In Sankovitch's case, someone else also obviously read that New York Times article. HarperCollins recently published her book, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading.

I didn't realize until shortly before I read Sankovitch's book that she had begun her year-long adventure to help cope with one of her own life's trials -- death, specifically the premature death of a sister who, like Nina, also loved good books.

Sankovitch's book is not a mere series of reviews. She still puts those on her blog and on Huffington Post. Rather, her book successfully tells us how reading affected and effected her life both now and when she was a child listening to her immigrant father read to her and her sisters. She tells how reading helped her dying sister -- and herself -- in those final months. It gave them something other than death to talk about; it gave them something other than death to think about. But reading was more than a distraction. It became an adventure for both sisters to anticipate when they were both alone and together.

Sankovitch's resume includes a Harvard law degree. A former corporate lawyer, she was not working outside the home at the time of her year-long reading project. But with a husband and four children, she wasn't swimming in free time. She shares with readers the difficulties in finding the time to read and review a book a day, especially when it's a long one such as the one her son suggested, Watership Down. Sankovitch reads good books, literature. But she is anything but a reading snob. She can enjoy a bestselling mystery while also feasting on a centuries-old classic. Her reading is diverse, from Tolstoy to Laurie Colwin to graphic novels.

One leaves Sankovitch's book, realizing she won't continue to read a book a day, but she will always be a reader and a writer. Along the way, she has no doubt already helped plant a love of reading in the minds of many other people around the country and the world. In my own case, I was already a reader but now make time to read more good books. I hope to work with my 10-year-old daughter to start a book club for her and a few of her friends if she wants, and I've started talking with her about reviewing children's books for my blog. After all, only a child can fully appreciate whether children will love a book written for children.

If you've not heard of Sankovitch, please check out her unusually well-organized blog. After you're over being stunned at how she did so much so well in so little time, read her book. It is not, as some might suspect, a mere diary boasting of her reading exploits. It is a book sharing the joy of reading with others, including every single person who reads even a single chapter of her book. It's a good, informative read. It's also the kind of book that can be read a second time and enjoyed over and over.

Thank you, Nina Sankovitch, for sharing your experiences -- the joys and the heartaches -- with us and passing on this inspiring journal of your reading year. I look forward to reading about your future adventures with the written word.