Books or Shoes?

Walking down Willard Street in Cambridge, Mass., one winter evening, I was drawn to lighted windows, bright squares amid the deepening cold and darkness. What caught my attention were the books: In house after house, built-in shelves held rows and rows of books. These old houses were built when people had small libraries of their own, and the current residents continue to fill those shelves.

I thought about my predawn walks back home in Maine, most houses dark. On the corner of Hillside and Church Street, I used to see a woman curled up on her couch reading at 5 a.m., but she moved away, and now that window, too, is dark.

I was walking that evening in Cambridge to meet Jeremy, my older son, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a voracious reader. I told him about my delight as reader, writer, and teacher at seeing all those lovely old houses filled with books, and shared, too, my sense of loss that so few people treasure books and reading any more. His younger brother, Micah, loves the heft of hardback books and has begun building a collection of his own, but he's a writer, completing his first novel at the age of 19, so his passion for books isn't...