Monday Morning Required Reading. Something short and completely out of context today, but so stunning that I couldn't not post it on here. I just finished wending my way through Nicole Krauss's The History of Love (yes, I know I am rather late to the party) and I found it profoundly lovely. It's nice when a book lives up to all the hype it has been given. So today I give you one of the most beautiful passages I've read in a book, possibly ever:

     The owner took her time unpacking the books she'd bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She'd never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called "The Age of Silence":

The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people's hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.

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