This month's book isn't about adventure, or romance, or triumph. It's about memory. Loss. The quiet return to the dark, just after you've seen the stars.
Flowers for Algernon isn't on most reading lists anymore. Maybe it was never supposed to be. It's too raw. Too quiet. Too honest. It's a story that doesn't end so much as it closes—like a door you watched open wide, only to feel it swing shut again. Slowly. In reverse.
And somewhere in the dark, there's a little white mouse. Running in circles.
"Memento Mori." Latin. "Remember that you must die." It sounds dramatic—almost too heavy—until you realize: It's not a threat. It's a whisper.
It's the truth you carry in the back of your throat. The one you try not to swallow. The one that haunts Charlie as he climbs the peak of human intelligence—only to see the horizon collapsing in on itself. To feel the light dim, neuron by neuron. Awareness doesn't save him. It only makes the fall worse.
That's what makes Algernon's story so brutal.
Not the science. Not the loss. But the knowledge that it was all temporary.
Charlie doesn't fear death because he's naïve. He fears it because he's tasted life. Full life. The kind with meaning. With potential. With connection.
So when it begins to slip, when he knows the decline has started… the heartbreak isn't just that he's losing himself. It's that he knows what he's losing.
That's where I've been lately. Maybe that's where you are, too.
Hurt. Reflection. Maybe even a little resentment at being made aware in the first place. Sometimes I want to retreat—to pull a Captain Nemo and disappear beneath the sea, let the surface world pass me by. But even at the bottom of the ocean… the weight still follows.
Why this book, now? Because Flowers for Algernon doesn't offer answers. It doesn't wrap the pain in a tidy bow. Instead, it does something far rarer:
It sits with you. It hurts with you. It reminds you that being broken by knowledge is still a form of grace.
If you've ever felt like a ghost in your own body… If you've ever watched your mind flicker and wondered, how long until the light goes out… If you've ever wondered whether the progress, the healing, the spark… was worth it if it fades...
This book is for you.
So, yeah. This is my memento mori moment. My offering to the part of you that doesn't need cheering up—just a quiet voice that says,
Take this one slow. Let it hurt a little. And maybe—just maybe—remember that even Algernon left a mark.