"It’s slightly embarrassing to have to admit that the best book you read all year was Anna Karenina. It’s a bit like saying that you’ve been listening to an album called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club by these Beatles kids out of Liverpool and that, yes, you can confidently reveal that they were definitely onto something."  - A Year In Reading: Mark O’Connell

"The general idea is that customers have started to use the bookstore as a place to handle, but not purchase, merchandise, like a Ferrari dealership, where you don’t actually expect to drive one home off the lot. According to a recent Codex Group survey, 39% of those who purchased a book on Amazon looked at said title in a bricks-and-mortar store first before heading online."  - Emma Straub, author and book seller, on the sad practice of ‘show rooming.’ (via millionsmillions)

"Instead of A Year in Reading, can I call this my Year of Books Half-Read? Lately I seem to find it impossible to spend more than half an hour at a time reading anything, and as a result I realize that I’ve succumbed to what I call the slug syndrome, as defined by the Mexican essayist and poet Gabriel Zaid. He writes: “Is anything more certain to make a book completely unintelligible than reading it slowly enough? It’s like examining a mural from two centimeters away…like a shortsighted slug."  - Natasha Wimmer’s Year In Reading (via millionsmillions)

"Libraries are a force for good. They wear capes. They fight evil. They don’t get upset when you don’t send them a card on their birthdays. (Though they will charge you if you’re late returning a book.) They serve communities. The town without a library is a town without a soul. The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance. Libraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn’t allow that torch to be extinguished."  - Libba Bray (via thelifeguardlibrarian)

bookworm73:

Looks like a lovely place to spend a rainy day reading…

"I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage."  - Roald Dahl  (via 15natives)

bookoasis:

(by  lover’s discourse)