First off, just a note, but “If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things” is not actually my favorite book. It’s one of my favorites. My overall favorite book is “Teach Me” by R.A. Nelson.
“If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things” was brilliant to me because it was so ordinary. It’s a book filled with tiny details of everyday life, things that most people would consider minutiae, but the author spun them together in such a way that they were luminescent. Things like orange peels lying alone on the floor, milk crates stacked one on top of the other, light slanting through a bedroom window.
“If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things” made me realize that I take things like that for granted every day of my life. After reading it I understood that those things are to be cherished and held deep within, in a special place inside the soul, because they may not come again.
This book interwove so many different characters and their actions throughout one day (think of that: the entire novel only spanned the course of a single day), sewing them into a kind of quilt made up of so many lives. It filled me with wonder and a desire to see more of the world. I see strangers differently now because of this book. I can see more deeply into them and imagine what they must be like.
But most of all, this book taught me that everything I know and believe in can be ripped away in a single second. And I don’t want to reveal the terrible event that occurred in the book that taught me this because I don’t want to give away the ending, but it made me rethink my life. And in fact, there was a terrible event that occurred in my life shortly after I read the book that I never saw coming. It shook me to the core and I felt an even stronger connection with the book because of that event.