Several years ago, inspired by Marcel Proust, I chose some books for my bedside table to read before going to sleep. I thought they would inspire me. But they went untouched for months, and when I noticed them, I felt guilty and embarrassed that I wasn’t reading them. I couldn’t live up to Proust.

Then I had an epiphany: what’s with the guilt? So, I made a stack of books I had read, loved, and wanted to reread. Books I was passionate about. There wasn’t enough room for all of them on my table, but I made a good start, books with phrases and images I remembered — such as the rocking chair in Gail Godwin’s “Evenings at Five”; Jenny Diski’s pleasure of smoking on a train in “Stranger on a Train”; and the passionate relationship Faulkner created in “Wild Palms.” “Passion is not so much an emotion as a destiny,” Jeanette Winterson wrote in “The Passion.” Lydia Davis had to be there; her’s was solitary passion as destiny in “The End of the Story.” James Salter, Willa Cather and Dacia Maraini had to be included. As did Mavis Gallant’s small volume, “Green Water, Green Sky” about madness in Venice and Paris, the European cities I loved the best. They couldn’t be left out. Finally, “The All of It,” Jeannette Haien’s beautiful book, a gift from a dear friend, and his scrawled dedication on the title page not long before his death.

“Dear Nancy, I found this little gem. Hope you enjoy it.
My love to you, Alex.”

And yes, I enjoyed it, I loved it. It will always be at the top of the list as the best of them all because it is.

I am pleased with my passionate choices and wonder which one I’ll choose to read first. Not to read, but to leaf through, look for the underlined phrases I loved, read as much as I wanted, and put it back, satisfied. This is my destiny.

Sorry, Proust, I do not have your grit, nor do I want it.