Some days are so long. The heat seems to squelch us, the moisture seems torn out of the air--there's nothing left. And at the end of the day, the bills pile up higher; your hands may feel worn to the bone; and he darkness only offers a few moments of silence before the next long day's due to begin again.

There are so many works of hope and comfort, or love and loss. Not every story has a Romeo-and-Juliet style ending, but the surprise is sometimes worth it.

I remember quite clearly the circumstances upon which I first read The Necklace. It was a required course in World Literature, taught by one of my favorite teachers and authors. We'd already read Oedipus Rex and The Metamorphosis. We'd read James Joyce and we'd talked about epiphany.

How could a short story about a spoiled young woman possibly compare?

In the story, "Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries. She was distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry." By the end of the story, her situation has changed dramatically. Unlike the romanticized version of A Little Princess, she and her husband struggle with the burden of a seemingly impossible loss. But, the anger and tortured envy is gone.

We wouldn't have wished for her experience... How could we? But, look at who she became? Was it worth it?

I've heard it said: Tragedy is a gift. We may find it anywhere.

With heat like today, I'm reminded of when I first read A Passage to India. It was hot that summer too, and I was studying for my Comprehensive Exam. I'd moved to Northern California for the summer. I lived in a tiny cabin, worked a part-time secretarial job, and was utterly immersed in reading--it was WONDERFUL! One of the best experiences of my life.

As I sat in that little place--surrounded by the boxes and boxes of books--I experienced India, through E.M. Forster's words. The heat, colors, sounds--all the vivid interplay of light and darkness; illusion and reality. Have you ever felt that you could reach out and touch a place? It would be different if you were there, of course. But, there's a sense of seeing and knowing a place through another person's eyes (and words). So strange, but oh, so REAL!

In Passage to India, E.M. Forster writes: "In England the moon had seemed dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together with earth and all other stars. A sudden sense of unity, of kinship with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman and out, like water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind."

Read more quotes from A Passage to India. Also, read the review.

What's to love or hate about reading an ebook? What's the good, the bad and the ugly?

Of course, many of the things that make us love ebooks are the very thing that makes us cringe and sometimes avoid the idea altogether.

Yeah, they are light and filled with possibility, but there's nothing quite like the feel of a well-loved book. The heft is wonderful in my favorite monster volumes, and it might even fall out of your hands as you fall asleep. Of course, I'd not want to take a huge (and expensive) classic to the beach or on a hike.

The ebook reader (yes, there are many to chose from) allows you to download many classics, and store them in a digital format for a time when you're ready to read them. And, if you're into the classics, there's a great deal of content in the public domain, so reading may be a much cheaper for you.

Then, if you carry your ebook reader, you'll be able to pick out a virtual book from just about anywhere, take digital notes as you read (depending on the brand of the reader), and steal a moment of diversion--buried in the printed word.

There's really a great deal to be said about the advantages of reading digital books. A friend of mine recently told me that she hasn't finished a book in years (she's just been too busy), but her husband just purchased an ebook reader for her last Christmas. Since then, she carries it with her everywhere, and finds that she really does have time--it just didn't seem like it before.

The ebook could solve at least a few of the reasons why we don't read. And, I'm all for most anything that would get you to read more great books. But, I'm still curious... For those of you who still hang onto the walls of books in your house, why do you love books so much? And, for those who have converted, why? And what do you think? Do you love the size, space, convenience, the geek of it all? Or do agree with CNN's John Abell, where he writes: "the e-book is fundamentally flawed." He says, "There are some aspects to print book culture that e-books can't replicate (at least not easily) -- yet."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes: "While we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day."

In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman draws from personal experience, locked in a yellow-papered room, without the saving graces of writing or reading. Loneliness and boredom give way to paranoia and psychosis. This work of Gothic fiction is a series of journal entries, written in an epistolary style. The story is an early example of feminist literature, condemning the androcentric hegemony in the medical profession.

Trapped in a locked room with yellow wallpaper, the walls come alive. Gilman writes: "There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will."

The young female narrator finally finds escape, with her own insanity (as the mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre). In the end, she accepts her solitary confinement. "For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."

Gilman calls for recovery, for health, and for survival. She was able to rise above the "rest cure." She left the narrator in the yellow room, but Gilman walked out of the room. She escaped her depression, isolation and loneliness. She left her marriage. And, she embraced work. As she explains, "I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite--ultimately recovering some measure of power."

Now, she offers escape for others...

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