The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

In general, she wasn’t the kind of woman who turned casual heads; her looks were an acquired taste, and her resting expression suggested you weren’t going to be given much chance to acquire it. She was small and slender and gave the overall impression of a baby deer, until she spoke and you realized you’d been looking at a fox all along.

Anxiety is what kept us alive, back in the day. It helps us know when things are wrong, when situations are dangerous or people mean us harm. It’s just sometimes it gets ahead of itself, right?”

as Neil Gaiman once memorably said, “Books were safer than other people, anyway.”

If there was a fifth Wednesday in the month, she would wing it, because she liked to live dangerously. Book nerds are daredevils, as you know.

“Your face is too mobile,” she’d explained.

“I’m talking and laughing and being an Active Listener,” Nina had replied.

“Well, quit it, because you look like you’ve been poked with a pin in every picture.”