AMEX or library? I think it’s telling that in my wallet the card in front is my local library ID card, not my American Express, VISA, or MasterCard. Not to suggest that I’m against spending plastic, but I think if I had to surrender those cards, the last to go would be the cardstock library card with rounded corners and my personal bar code. I suspect that my addiction to print began before I was in elementary school, growing up in a house surrounded by books, bookcases, and magazines. My earliest memories of books bring me back to Dick, Jane, and Spot, but that was not yet a hobby much less a lifestyle. By 5th grade or so, I was stalking the school library reading every one of Walter Farley’s Black Stallion novels, consuming the Hardy Boys series, and devouring even encyclopedias and other nonfiction books about explorers, scientists, soldiers, and dinosaurs. In high school I sought extra English classes where The Bible as Literature offered as much as did Shakespeare and Hemingway. No surprise then that I was a lit major in college and eventually became an English teacher, if only for 5 quick years. Now in my late 50’s and working at the Stern Center for Language and Learning (having been a teacher or principal for most of my career to date,) I stalk the local library for intriguing novels, two at a time, every three weeks yielding to my little bar coded membership card. Reading as both hobby and lifestyle. Priceless!