There may be stranger reasons for being alive. There are books There’s interlibrary loan. There are books you can fall into and pull up over your head.

There may be stranger reasons for being alive. There are books There’s interlibrary loan. There are books you can fall into and pull up over your head.

Tolkien understood about the things that happen after the end. Because this is after the end, this is all the Scouring of the Shire, this is figuring out how to live in the time that wasn’t supposed to happen after the glorious last stand. I saved the world, or I think I did, and look, the world is still here, with sunsets and interlibrary loans. And it doesn’t care about me any more than the Shire cared about Frodo.

Before I got glasses, I thought Monet was the world's only realist landscape painter.

I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.

It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.

Reading is awesome and flexible and fits around chores and earning money and building the future and whatever else I’m doing that day. My attitude towards reading is entirely Epicurean—reading is pleasure and I pursue it purely because I like it.