What is Satisfaction? It is This.

I spent the late morning and the entire afternoon reading the rest of The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, and I felt such deep satisfaction, such calm happiness from having become so absorbed in this story about a failing newspaper in Rome and all its inhabitants, editors, writers, reader and publisher alike. Rachman's quiet genius is in each chapter telling the story of each character, while sprinkling the others in as cameos, bringing it all together with what feels like a proper epilogue. And I loved it. I loved the book, I loved that feeling I got from having read something so good that afterward, I went to my priority reading stack and pulled out How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal. So far, it's good, direct in its approach in this story about a woman taking in her daughter's stepdaughter while she goes to Germany to attend to her severely burned soldier husband in Afghanistan. There's lots of breadmaking involved, and though anything food-related always holds my attention, and I feel so involved again, I want this more often than I had it before. More reading. Lots more. Now if this same, lasting feeling can be found in a relationship, I'm all set.