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.

Watching a scene from a film in slow motion is possible, but there’s an unreal air to it reading a passage from a book slowly does nothing to rob the words of their power. A film presents images a book creates images inside the reader, with the reader’s active participation. Books are good for your brain.

Books, I knew then and now, give body to our ideas and imaginations, make them flesh in the world a bookstore is the city where our fleshed-out inner selves reside.

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.

Rereading a favorite novel first read 5, 10, or 20 years ago, is a measure of our travel, how far we've come it's a way of visiting an earlier self.