How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book?

Books connect us with others, but that connection is created in solitude, one reader in one chair hearing one writer, what John Irving refers to as one genius speaking to another.

How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book?

A bran' new book is a beautiful thing, all promise and fresh pages, the neatly squared spine, the brisk sense of a journey beginning. But a well-worn book also has its pleasures, the soft caress and give of the paper's edges, the comfort, like an old shawl, of an oft-read story.

The bookstore and the coffeehouse are natural allies; Neither has a time limit, slowness is encouraged.

The books of our childhood offer a vivid door to our own pasts, and not necessarily for the stories we read there, but for the memories of where we were and who we were when we were reading them; to remember a book is to remember the child who read that book.

Books are slow. They require time; they are written slowly, published slowly, and read slowly.