I can’t remem­ber any­one my own age who was enthu­si­as­tic about books. Read­ing is by nature a soli­tary act, but just as nat­ural for me was the impulse to share what I was read­ing, and my excited over­tures tended to fall on indif­fer­ent ears. I was a very shy child, and books were one of the few things I got excited enough about to try talk­ing with other kids. It was easy to jus­tify retreat­ing back into my imag­i­na­tion when they failed to rec­i­p­ro­cate. he rea­son I kept try­ing, though, is because I did have pow­er­ful proof that some kids were as into books as I was. […]