When you’re reading a book that just shakes you to your core, where your hands are trembling but you can’t wait to turn the page, where you’re reading and you look at the time and 15 minutes have passed, then 30 minutes, then an hour, and you can’t wait to turn the page, when you read a passage that hits your soul and you underline it and you re-read it and re-read it, where you feel so grateful that you’re alive to read these words, to let them infect you and become you—that’s how I feel after reading American Pastoral. I still have one more part to read, but my god.