Give a book - support a writer

A friend of mine forwarded the following email to me and I thought it was worth sharing far and wide.

"10 REASONS WHY YOU (and Everyone You Know) SHOULD GIVE BOOKS THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

ONE:  When you give someone a book, you create a way to share an experience that will continue long after the holidays. Months later, you can ask: "What did you think of the part where he left her?", and the book might mean the world to both of you.  Unlikely when the altnerative question is: "What did you think of the linen spritzer?"

TWO: Have YOU ever tried to wrap a Round Cocotte? Well forget about it!

THREE: JK Rowling needs the money. No, wait: Nora Roberts needs the money. No, wait: Any writer not famous enough to be mentioned in this list needs the money! (And more than the money, they need a little bit of love for all those years of labor.)  

(FYI: Jeff Bezos does not need the money. He is building a personal space-port in West Texas. Please consider an independent bookstore. )

FOUR: Books are the best deal there is. The National Book Award-winning author Marilynne Robinson, for example, spends years on her novels, sometimes decades. And she writes sentences like this:

"Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden? Light would force each salt calyx to open in prisms, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water--peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt there would be greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires."

You can get "Housekeeping" in paperback for $11.20. That is $1.21 more than a Mr. Bill Plush Pet Toy.

FIVE: Most people who aren't nine would rather fall asleep with a book by their pillow than with this year's number one bestselling toy (so far): the Pillow Pet.
Though we must confess a soft spot for Miss Sassy Cat.


SIX: Books don't break until you love them so much their spines collapse.  And even after that happens they don't get shorter.

SEVEN: Books don't get lost. If you read a book it's yours forever, no matter what happens to the pages its written on.

EIGHT: Books don't come in the wrong size, or in the wrong color, or with batteries not included. (That's your eReader -- not the book!)

NINE: Books don't judge their readers. But books invite the kind of judgment that elevates the discourse, and that sometimes changes the course of things altogether.

TEN: A lot of presents say more about you than they do about the person you give them to.  But a book speaks for itself."