The book had been laying on the small table in the living room for weeks. My original copy of Pearl S. Buck’s “The Good Earth,” the paperback was quite small, almost tiny compared to the trade paperbacks that make up most of my current-day reading.

My original copy of “The Good Earth,” the classic novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck.

I had recently re-read the tale of the Chinese farmer, Wang Lung, and the life he built by working the land. But the book I read this time was a much newer copy, one that I had picked up last fall at the YWCA of Hanover‘s annual used-book sale. It was bigger, easier to hold and to read.

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