An essay on audiobooks.

A public domain story of paranoia by the sci-fi master.

"Binary fission, obviously. Splitting in half and forming two entities. Probably each lower half went to the cafe, it being farther, and the upper halves to the movies. I read on, hands shaking. I had really stumbled onto something here. My mind reeled as I made out this passage."

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.

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.