He asked <...> Rosemary, why do you love books so much? And I said, Well, I don't know <...> I suppose I love them because they're quiet, and I can take them to the park.

Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.

Let me give you some advice: make friends with a millionaire when he's a friendless sixth-grader.

So I switch to my MacBook and make my rounds: news sites, blogs, tweets. I scroll back to find the conversations that happened without me during the day. When every single piece of media you consume is time-shifted, does that mean it’s actually you that’s time-shifted?

I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.

Some of them are working very hard indeed. “What are they doing?” “My boy!” he said, eyebrows raised. As if nothing could be more obvious. “They are reading!

Are there sexual fetishes that involve books? There must be. I try not to imagine how they might work.