Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading Audiobook

Quotes

• “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair will transport you to a time before texts and tweets. Through the stories of her own family, Nina Sankovitch shows how books have the power to refresh, renew, and even heal us. I loved this memoir.”

  — Julie Klam, New York Times bestselling author of You Had Me at Woof

• “The beauty of her project lies in seeing how books intertwine with daily life, how very much they affect our moods, interactions, and, especially important for Sankovitch, how we recover and process our memories…She makes reading seem accessible, relaxing, inspiring, fun.”

  — Los Angeles Times

• “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is original, uplifting, and very moving: a unique celebration of life, love and literature.”

  — S. J. Bolton, Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author of Now You See Me

• “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair masterfully weaves beloved and sometimes surprising books into central events in the writer’s life. There is much to learn from this moving book. Sankovitch writes with intelligence and honesty, leading us to respond in a similar manner.”

  — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, American Book Award–winning author

• “Anyone who has ever sought refuge in literature will identify with Tolstoy and the Purple Chair.”

  — O, The Oprah Magazine

• “This graceful memoir describes a true love affair with books.”

  — Boston Globe

• “Sankovitch’s memoir stands as a tribute to the power of books to enrich our daily lives.”

  — Christian Science Monitor

• “[An] entertaining bibliophile’s dream…Sankovitch’s memoir speaks to the power that books can have over our daily lives. Sankovitch champions the act of reading not as an indulgence but as a necessity, and will make the perfect gift from one bookworm to another.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “[Tolstoy and the Purple Chair] digs deep into that near-mystical connection between a reader and an author—that startling feeling that you are channeling someone you have never met…A gripping and inspiring book.”

  — Connecticut Post

• “What Sankovitch has accomplished in her first book is not only to celebrate the transformational, even healing, powers of reading but to give the reader a feeling of reading those books as well, through the eyes of an astute reader.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• “A beautifully fluid, reflective, and astute memoir that gracefully combines affecting family history with expert testimony about how books open our minds to ‘the complexity and entirety of the human experience.’ Sankovitch’s reading list in all its dazzling variety is top-notch.”

  — Booklist

• “A beautifully paced look at how mindfulness can affect the psyche.”

  — Shelf Awareness (starred review)

• “Her deeply moving memoir artfully intertwines her immigrant family’s history with the universal themes of hope, resilience, and memory. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair celebrates not only the healing power of literature but its ability to connect us to the best of ourselves—and each other.”

  — American Way

• “[A] brilliant and heartwarming book.”

  — Ventura County Star

• “In Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, her affectionate and inspiring paean to the power of books and reading, Sankovitch gracefully acknowledges that her year of reading was an escape into the healing sanctuary of books, where she learned how to move beyond recuperation to living.”

  — BookPage

• “What is best in Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, however, is not the author’s literary criticism but the way in which she blends her accounts of her reading with the story of her family and with broader human concerns.”

  — Smoky Mountain News

• “Sankovitch’s account works well because she uses her reading list to jump off into topics that are tangential, yet intriguing and often important.”

  — Buffalo News

• “An original and touching…account of one woman’s lifelong affinity for books and her attempt to channel that affinity to deal with her grief after her sister dies. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is an understated but moving story about the effects of a ‘year of magical reading.’”

  — The Dartmouth

• “Nina Sankovitch has crafted a dazzling memoir that reminds us of the most primal function of literature—to heal, to nurture, and to connect us to our truest selves.”

  — Thrity Umrigar, author of The Space between Us