Having a good book in my hands is like putting ground under my feet. Perhaps to some, reading is seen as a way of escaping or of disengaging with the world but for me, it is a way of engaging as completely as I possibly can. Reading is an act of trust, artistic expression, and connecting to a world entirely outside our own perspective.

A story can collapse time and space and connect us to people, societies and experiences that we have never known. In an article titled "Don't Turn Away from the Art of Life", Arnold Weinstein says "We enter the bookstore, see the many volumes arrayed there, and think: so much to read, so little time. But books do not take time; they give time, they expand our resources of both heart and mind. It may sound paradoxical, but they are, in the last analysis, scientific, for they trace the far-flung route by which we come to understand our world and ourselves. They take our measure."