On the power of youth literature.

“If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it’s probably because at some level you find “reality” a bit of a disappointment.”

On collecting books.

I have lived in books, for books, by and with books; in recent years, I have been fortunate enough to be able to live from books. And it was through books that I first realised there were other worlds beyond my own; first imagined what it might be like to be another person; first encountered that deeply intimate bond made when a writer's voice gets inside a reader's head.

An essay on audio books.

Two Paths for the Future of Text: Steven Berlin Johnson's lecture on "commonplace" books in which great 17th and 18th century thinkers compiled their browsing, and what it means for journalism today.