The Reading List

It is 2017. Twenty-something Aidan returns to the Harrow Road Library, which he and sister used to visit when they were kids. He remembers the “magical” feel of the library, how he would burrow into stacks of books and find an escape from the difficulties of his home life through stories. Now, after so many years, he meanders through the fiction shelves. He is uncertain what he is looking for, knowing only that he needs “to know how something will end” (2). As he sits alone at a table, he watches an older patron, a woman, sticking a note into a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Aidan, curious, recovers the note once the patron departs. He finds in “neat, looping, warm, inviting” handwriting a list of eight novels (4)—in addition to the Lee title, Rebecca, The Kite Runner, Life of Pi, Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Beloved, and A Suitable Boy. The note says only, “Just in case you need it” (4). Most of the titles mean nothing to Aidan—he is tempted to take the list with him, but he leaves it in the book and departs the library.