I had a friend once who told me he didn't read for fun because he read at work all day. Not surprisingly, he had not one book in his house. What he was doing was processing information among work colleagues. Schedules, reports and manuals are not read, they are consumed. The information may be critical, but it is ephemeral.
Books can be also be on ephemeral topics, but they last on bookshelves in a way that no one ever preserved a delivery schedule.
Another friend recently shared a copy of a speech by Salt Lake City bookseller Tony Weller. Why Books are Precious. Interestingly, it was this speech that inspired me to proudly claim my dinosaur-hood in this blog. The speech, and the way I found it. As you'll deduce from the linkage, it is published online. However, my friend printed it out, and handed the copy around to people with whom she knew it would resonate. She didn't tell me not to copy it, but I could tell that to photocopy it would destroy something that it contained. So I started reading.
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