– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Richard Howard
This is one of those books that I loved dearly when I first read it, back in the nadir of high school. It strikes me as the type of thing one needs to read in a very precise time of one's life, and only when in the exact frame of mind most amendable to it. I can easily imagine bouncing off this book if not already predisposed to those specific factors.
For my part, I read the book in the middle of high school, between the precipice of society refusing to treat me like an adult, while also feeling terrible about having possibly wasted the only childhood I would've ever had. Of course, these were just personal reactions to things outside of my own control. With my own childhood, for example, I can look back and plainly realize that there was very little about it I had any agency in. Yet because of this, for some reason, I still dearly missed what I could not have ever possibly had. Perhaps it was because of these circumstances, and all the false nostalgia it inflicts, that this pseudo-philosophical and incredibly schmaltzy book would hit so hard.
In finding a bookstore copy, I clearly overspent and splurged on getting a full-color hardcover that came in a blue felted and gold-lettered heavy cardstock casing. Perhaps that alone should've indicated that the love for this particular book is a bit overshared.
