I am reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the second time. (Apparently, it is considered a “short novel,” so it could not have made my list.) I am trying to figure out why it struck me so, the first time. Was it the voice? Yes. Was it the mysterious, unknowable character of Holly Golightly? Oh yes.

I have never seen the movie; I’m afraid to. Just as I do not want to see The Handmaid’s Tale and I wish to god I never saw Wide Sargasso Sea.

I was just reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the subway. I’d found it at the library—I didn’t mean to get it, I hadn’t gone there to get it, but there it was, and on the spot I realized I wanted to read it again. Immediately. I was taking the long trip uptown on the 1 train, and even when we were stalled for many (mysterious, unknowable) minutes at 72nd Street it barely registered. So engrossed was I in a book I had already read that I was lucky not to have missed my stop. So engrossed, I didn’t realize I must have been on the train such a long time I was actually ten minutes late to meet my friend.

Uptown, I took the opportunity to buy some passable bagels. The bagels downtown just do not hold up. And before I came home to bite into the perfect crusty chewy goodness that is a Nussbaum & Wu poppy seed bagel, I opened up Breakfast at Tiffany’s again. I reached the part where she asks, You know those days when you get the mean reds? And I realized, oh, that’s just how my days have been lately—mean and red—and the way out of that, right now, so simple:

A delectable uptown bagel. And, of course, a good book.