"This all sounds very pleasant--coffeehouses! the smell of ink!--but I would like to remind us all that pledges are rarely made without a bit of underlying risk. In this case, make no mistake, we undertake a great deal of it. To say nothing of stepping silently around the characters who spend time at libraries, we must reckon with smudgy, soft ink on our hands, paper cuts, early-evening cherry pie cravings when nothing else will do, men at bars who ask--or do not ask--with cocked eyebrow, what we're reading. We risk missing our train stop or leaving a half-finished paperback in the back of a cab. We risk heading in bleary-eyed, achy, having a poem knock the wind out of us as we cross the street. We risk daydreaming, staring at strangers whose toes remind us of Seymour's, glimpsing the dust of other worlds. We risk walking into another land and coming back changed, or not ever quite returning at all. It is a brave choice, to make a pledge. And if we're going to Read the Printed Word, it seems important to face the facts."
[found via first milk, and since i couldn't think of anything better to say, i just quoted her.]
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