One of the books on my current reading list (I’ve usually got at least three going at any given time, sometimes more!) is E.M. Forster’s classic on writing, Aspects of the Novel. Here’s a passage I simply had to share:
Pseudo-scholarship is, on its good side, the homage paid by ignorance to learning…Books have to be read (worse luck, for it takes a long time); it is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the west. The reader must sit down alone and struggle with the writer, and this the psuedo-scholar will not do. He would rather relate a book to the history of its time, to events in the life of its author, to the events it describes, above all to some tendency. As soon as he can use the word ‘tendency’ his spirits rise, and though those of his audience may sink, they often pull out their pencils at this point and make a note, under the belief that a tendency is portable.
~E.M. Forster
It gives me a lift to think that even ‘the greats’ had to struggle with books at times. But, oh, what a glorious tousle it is! And how dreary and flat life would be without it!
In the film Miss Potter, Beatrix’s character has a conversation with her parents in which her mother makes a rather disagreeable reference to her age. Her reply has been in my heart ever since: 
Well, my mother and I spent yesterday afternoon in the Lake District–via the delightful new film, Miss Potter, which chronicles the literary journey of our beloved Beatrix. It was so enchanting–so altogether lovely–that we were walking on air when we came out of the theatre. That hasn’t happened to me in a long, long time! And instead of the traffic and noise of one of the (ugliest) parts of town, my eyes were filled with visions of sweeping vistas of mountains and lakes, peaceful pastoral vignettes and cozy rooms–treasures themselves preserved by Beatrix Potter’s conservation efforts. 
But the seriousness and courage with which the most popular author of children’s books of all time pursued what she loved was treated with a genteel respect–richly deserved, in my opinion. I’ve always loved Beatrix Potter–from the pre-Amazon days when some of the first books of hers I ever laid eyes on were the ones my grandparents brought back to me from England in the early 80′s. And now, as an adult with dreams of my own, her story, interpreted through this film, has inspired me afresh to live passionately in all that I love. 