Greetings dear reader! As I think it must be for many of you, reading is a retreat for me, and an increasingly necessary one given the trying times in which we are living. As I reflect upon my reading life, one of my favorite memories is of many childhood hours spent reading in solitude on my grandmother’s chaise lounge.

It was that very same grandmother who got me my first library card fifty years ago. Nowadays, I carry four library cards in my wallet, one each for the two universities here in town, one for my county library system, and one for the adjoining county library system, giving me free access to a grand total of sixteen library locations.

So, I suppose it was only natural that my dream job materialized in the position of book editor at a national magazine. And it was said job that contributed to my library occupying more than thirty bookshelves before we “minimized to mobilize.” However, as the above photo attests, that library is limited to a mere three shelves today.

Anne Bogel, author of I’d Rather Be Reading, speaks for Linda and me as she writes, “We are readers. Books are an essential part of our lives and of our life stories. For us, reading isn’t just a hobby or a pastime; it’s a lifestyle.” Also, it was none other than Henry David Thoreau who penned, “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”

And speaking of Thoreau, author George F. Whicher writes of him in Walden Revisited: A Centennial Tribute to Henry David Thoreau: “He did not believe in postponing the best of life to some other occasion. He wanted to catch the full savor of experience at once. So he seized the hours that he needed for reading and writing.”

To close on that note, “Solitary reading is the ideal vehicle for individual leisure,” writes Witold Rybczynski in Waiting for the Weekend. “Reflection, contemplation, privacy…are also associated with reading books. And withdrawal. Both withdrawal from the world around one, from the cares of everyday life, and withdrawal into oneself.” In other words, reading as retreat.