It’s happened to me a few times that a book is otherwise fairly forgettable presents a fantastic insight, or crystallizes an idea I’d felt but never verbalized. It’s one the major reasons I rarely stop reading books, probably to my detriment. I’ll give my example, but I’m curious what other people have discovered in books they probably wouldn’t recommend.

In Richard Farr’s “The Fire Seekers,” an adventure story with a historical bent that focused on all the wrong things in my opinion, had this line that literally led me to have a better relationship with my father: “[my father] wants to feel close to me, wants to understand me, and wants the
easy road to that result, which is me being more like him than I am.”

What about you?