I love audiobooks. What a great way to get to know a book by listening to it.

The other day we were working on a project and my helper -the young women I will soon tell you about -and I listened to “A Man Called Ove.” We worked quietly, we were both captured by the story.

When I looked at the clock, it was already 7 pm, and I told her to finish up. She comes by in the evenings and helps me in my workshop from 5 to 7 pm when I have bigger projects.

She finished up, cleaned up her workspace and sat down beside me. “I am in no hurry,” she said, “Let’s listen to another chapter,” and I couldn’t help but smiling. I felt the same way.

I needed to know more about Ove, wanted to get to know him better through the voice of the narrator. I felt like I had stumbled into something unexpectedly beautiful and touching.

I guess that’s what good books do. They make the world around us stop. Our eyes mist, we smile and sigh, we want it to go on, but we aren’t quite sure if we can take much more.

Then, when it’s over, we sit there quietly and drift slowly back into the world around us.

I feel the same way about many of your blogs. Sometimes I just want to come on for a few minutes, and then I get lost and I forget the time when I start reading the posts of my blogging friends. I have laughed and cried with you, I have reached out and have been touched, I laughed myself silly, and I had to wipe away tears.

So many of you give me a glimpse of your lives, so many of you share your joy and your tears with me, and therefore I want to thank you -I don’t think I ever did.

Over the last couple of years, I have built my own private library, and it’s waiting for me anytime I feel like leaving my own little world for just a short while.

It’s an impressive construction that reaches across the globe, high and low and you all are part of it.

Construct