№ 703. Dear Reader

Dear Reader,

    There are readers and there are Readers. If you fall into the latter category you are likely to find yourself finished reading the morning newspaper and then pulling over the cereal box to carry you through the rest of breakfast. You definitely carry a book or magazine on your way to appointments and for public transportation. You probably walk to school with a book in hand, oblivious to sidewalk impediments. The "20 minutes a day" reading assignment in grade school is unfathomable, not because it is too much time, rather because it is far too little. You might dislike overnight camp because you don't really care to make lanyards or go canoeing and would rather be reading. All of this is good.

    Really. Better than good—we Readers are not reading because it was assigned.

    We are reading because we love words, and stories, and adventure, and love, and previously unimaginable places be they real or made up.

    Writing this letter turned out to be a challenge. Being a Reader doesn't automatically make you a Writer, although it makes for better odds. Some people can do both, and that is admirable. But all those Writers share one thing, they need us, the Readers.

                                                                                                 --- Lise Solomon, from A Velocity of Being