My Gypsy Life

In December, I decided to take the literary plunge and purchase a kindle. I was on my way to China for 6 weeks and I didn’t want to lug a lot of books around. Since then, I’ve used it very little finding myself unable to read any novel on such a device. 

Yet, I still brought my kindle to Turkey just in case something would click and magically I would be able to be engulfed into a novel electronically on my travels. It hasn’t been touched in 6 weeks.

So one day, I found myself wandering down Istiklal and into a bookstore. I was looking for a collection of Rumi poems for a dear friend. Of course, I ended up with 2 books for my reading pleasure (see below). I just finished Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love. Every chapter I was underlining sentences that touched me in my present moments. Shafak is by far one of my favorite writers.

There is something to be said about holding a book, turning its pages, bending its spine, as you sit on a beach watching the waves splash against the sand.

“How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.” - The Forty Rules of Love