"Not so long ago, people were predicting the decline of the printed book. Riding the wave of digital delirium that accompanied the rise of the Internet, pundits were convinced that downloading would spell the hardcover's downfall, envisioning a world of readers with their faces aglow devouring the latest literary page-scroller.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the future: People kept buying books. As clunky and old-fangled as the idea of a hefty tome might be, there's just something about pulling a book off its shelf, cracking it open, and smoothing your hand over that first, supple page.

Readers don't just own books; we live with them. We admire the way they look resting on a polished coffee table. We fold them across our chests for a moment's pause after a moving chapter. We take them along for the ride. I enjoy the rough look of a paperback that has survived, say, a camping trip. Its weathered pages and curled corners speak not only to where I've been with it, but also to where it's taken me."

• The Absolutely Most Frequently-Owned Title on the list--owned by some 403,252 member libraries--is not, say, Huckleberry Finn (that's #7) or even the Bible (#2) but the U.S. Census.
  
  
• The most commonly-owned non-government document is a children's classic, Mother Goose. Many of the other titles in the top 100 were written for children. For example, three more libraries own The Very Hungry Caterpillar than own Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey
  
  
• Collections of comic strips are owned by more libraries than some of the world's most famous literary classics: Garfield at Large is #18 (Macbeth is #19), Calvin & Hobbes is #148 (#149 is To Kill a Mockingbird), and Dilbert (at #448) outranks Jane Austen's Persuasion (#449).
  
  
• Several nonfiction works (such as Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail, #154) are owned by more libraries than a slew of well-known novels; the relatively high rank of works of scholarship such as H.W. Janson's The History of Art (#191) remind the reader that many OCLC members are academic libraries.
  
  
• Scriptures of various religions rank high on the list, including several high-ranking Eastern classics (The Bhagavadgita is up there at #21; the Upanishads, #188, outranks The Dead Sea Scrolls, #177).
  
  
• Modern advertising apparently affects the ranking of many titles. For example, more libraries own Richard Bolles' What Color is My Parachute (#269) than own Francis Bacon's Essays (#271).
  
  
• Selectors at medium-sized and smaller AFPL branches might want to scan the OCLC list to remind them of older items they may not realize are almost universally owned by U.S. libraries--titles like John Hersey's Hiroshima (#333).
  
  
• One of the most intriguing features of the OCLC Top 1,000 is the fact that it includes music titles. All the music titles listed are Western classics--not a single Beatles or Rolling Stone album made the list. Selectors at AFPL branches that maintain a collection of classical music recordings could use the OCLC list to make sure their collections contain all The Biggies from the Western musical canon.

"[Blogger] Rich Burridge compares what he paid for books at his local library's book sale with what the same books would've cost him through Amazon (used and new). The library book sale wins."

"You not only can’t take [your fabulous collection of favorite books] with you, but your relations will likely offer the whole to some imbecile who will like as not deposit the books in a landfill when they can’t be sold profitably. That, or they’ll end up in the hands of the folks who buy hard-bound volumes by the shelf, as raw material for chic wall coverings. Interior decorators cut the spines off the books, gluing them to wallboard to create a sort of library effect."

"The restoration to favour of forgotten books and authors is always a chancy business. It is a myth that time will do the testing; it would be truer to credit chance, and, more important still, the continuation of reasonably well-informed talk."

Why do I have all these goddamned books? Why does anybody? They're expensive, they weigh you down, they're cumbersome. Writing them, reading them, treasuring them. This day and age, it feels antiquated. Quaint. Especially now, with all the information in the world a click and a digital beep-boop-bop away, why all these ponderous rows of bound paper? What's the illness, and what's the cure?

"Good reading can be described either as an enlargement or as a temporary annihilation of the self. But that is an old paradox; ‘he that loseth his life shall save it.' We therefore delight to enter into other men's beliefs....even though we think them untrue. And into their passions, though we think them depraved...Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality...In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself...Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself, and am never more myself than when I do."

• "World Hum's" list of the top 30 recommended armchair travel titles. Just as helpful: the site-users' comments on their own passionately-favored titles overlooked by World Hum's listmakers.
  
  
• A list of the world's saddest novels, compiled by British novelist (and avid reader and articulate blogger) John Baker, with his readers chiming in with their own candidates.

• Morton Grove (Illinois) PL's "Readers Services"
• Charlotte/Mecklenburg County (North Carolina) PL's "Reader's Club"
• Lake County (Indiana) PL's "The Reader's Place"
• Kansas City (Kansas) PL's "Reader's Advisory"
• Lansing (Illinois) PL's "Readers' Advisory"
• Lakewood (Ohio) PL's "REader's ADvisor"
• Fresno County (California) PL's "What to Read Next?"
• Peoria (Illinois) Public Library's "Web Sites for Booklovers"
• Sachem (New York) PL's "The Reader's Advisor"
• Mid-Continent (Missouri) PL's "Reader's Advisory"
• Downers Grove (Illinois) PL's "The Reader's Place"
• Berwyn (Illinois) PL's "Readers Advisory"
• St. Charles (Illinois) PL's "Readers Services"
• Williamsburg (Virginia) Regional Library's "Bookweb"
• North Canton (Ohio) PL's "Reader's Resource"
• Seattle Public Library's "Reader's Corner"

• Donald Barthelme
• Michael Chabon
• J.M. Coetzee
• John Le Carre
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Seamus Heaney
• Thomas Pynchon
• Rainer Maria Rilke
• Paul Theroux
• Henry David Thoreau

Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. It produces probably the severest strain of any form of literature. It is the highest form of literature. It yields the highest form of pleasure, and teaches the highest form of wisdom. In a word, there is nothing to compare with it. I say this with sad consciousness of the fact that the majority of people do not read poetry.

I am persuaded that many excellent persons, if they were confronted with the alternatives of reading “Paradise Lost” and going round Trafalgar Square at noonday on their knees in sack-cloth, would choose the ordeal of public ridicule. Still, I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.

If poetry is what is called “a sealed book” to you, begin by reading Hazlitt’s famous essay on the nature of “poetry in general.” It is the best thing of its kind in English, and no one who has read it can possibly be under the misapprehension that poetry is a mediaeval torture, or a mad elephant, or a gun that will go off by itself and kill at forty paces. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the mental state of the man who, after reading Hazlitt’s essay, is not urgently desirous of reading some poetry before his next meal....

• AllConsuming - "books that are mentioned on weblogs"
• aNobii - "create, share, and explore booklists"
• Bibliophil - "keep track of your books in a customized library"
• Booktribes - " read it, love it, share it"
• Bookswap
• Bookswellread - "your free online book journal"
• ChainReading - "book tracking made easy"
• ConnectViaBooks - "the social network based on books"
• Douban - "discover books, music, people"
• Good Reads - “what your friends are reading”
• Gurulib - "organize your home library"
• Lib.rario.us - "catalog your...collection...commune and orate"
• Listal - "list [and rate] the stuff you love"
• MediaChest - "track books, CDs, DVDs, and games"
• reader2reader - "share opinions about books"
• Reliwa - "share your books, music, and opinions"
• Shelfari - "create a virtual shelf to show off your books"
• ShelfCentered - "[search,] organize...makes wishlists...share with friends"
• Squirl - "catalog, organize and share...practically anything"
• Stuffopolis - "keep track of your stuff"
• Zestr - "keep track of your books, movies, music, and games"

• Total number of bookstores in the state: 188 (122 independents, 68 chain outlets)
• Metro-Atlanta chains: 22 Borders/Waldenbooks; 5 Barnes & Nobles/B Daltons
• Georgia’s ranking of bookstores per capita among all States: 27th

…What a precious thing free or cheap interlibrary lending is for virtually every student, scholar, and recreational reader in the United States.

…The average American probably doesn't know it, but interlibrary lending in the United States costs…about $22 to borrow a book and $12 to lend one, according to statistics from the Association of Research Libraries.

That adds up to a transaction cost of well over $30 for each volume. Even when patrons at private or public libraries in the United States are asked to pay for the service, the charge is usually minimal and doesn't go far toward actually offsetting the true cost of the practice. For the most part, libraries silently eat the costs.

The significance of that sacrifice goes largely unnoticed. It isn't the sexiest line on a library budget. But there is something profoundly democratic, surprisingly compassionate, and deeply civic in sharing our national resources in this manner.

The monetary sacrifice of the loan, along with the relinquishing of a physical book that represents a considerable investment on the part of the providing library, is even more astonishing during an era in which we hear daily reports about budget cuts to public, school, and research libraries in every state. The American Library Association notes that cuts in library funds that have been announced in the media in the past four years have been immense, amounting to about $188-million. Libraries are hardly in a position to waste money by serving distant patrons and taking the risk of never getting their books back.

And yet, they do.

…The exchange of books between public and private institutions in the United States isn't a quid-pro-quo system, either. Just because Harvard lends more than it receives doesn't stop it from participating. University libraries like mine borrow more than they lend, and yet resource-sharing groups generally don't blackball us from membership.

The system works precisely because it helps everyone. If too many libraries withdraw from the sharing systems because they believe they are incurring more costs than benefits, the system falls apart.

Interlibrary lending only works when, in some fundamental way, libraries consider all of us to be their patrons. They must have the foresight and the imagination to see that all knowledge in some way, someday, will serve everyone. What goes around may, both literally and figuratively, come around.

According to some oft-cited statistics, 81% of Americans believe they have a book in them and 80% of American families did not buy or read a book last year.

Bloom Syndrome: a condition in which the sufferer is unable to read any work of literature unless it is deemed Significant by Harold Bloom and which often results in the reader losing the will to live/read, crushed under the weight of canonical imperatives. The Syndrome develops gradually with the sufferer firstly accepting the notion that some books are better than others, placing undue emphasis on books which have won prizes or been favourably reviewed by The Clever People in newspapers. This begins the descent into genre deprecation in which all romance/chick lit is dismissed as unreadable, followed gradually by an inability to stomach any fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers and finally, mystery novels (these are the last genre to be abandoned because Clever People occasionally admit to reading them as a guilty pleasure). Thereafter sufferers quickly develop Classic monomania, a state of mind in which the literary tastes of the now emaciated reader have become so distorted that she can take only small doses of books endorsed by His Bloomness as being Works Of Genius. If left untreated, the Syndrome can result in a fatal loss of the love of reading.

Treatment consists of persuading the deluded patient that the world will not end, her brain will not rot, her blog readers will not scorn her, if she reads a book for pure pleasure irrespective of the name on the cover or what The Clever People think of it. If this can be achieved then small doses of light reading should be administered at frequent intervals. Care should be taken not to expose the convalescent reader to any over-hyped contemporary fiction as this may cause a serious relapse. Once treatment is deemed successful, and the reader has regained her zest for life and reading, all infected copies of The Karamazov Brothers will need to be burnt to avoid subsequent re-infection.

"Calm and simple delight. Any childhood lover of books remembers that wave of relief and exaltation that would buoy you the moment you realized you could return to a book you'd been living deep inside for days. So that you would climb back in, as into a cardboard-box fort, and close the cover behind you like a door. Such is one common encounter with what American essayist Sven Birkerts calls ‘deep time’ - that clockless, borderless psychic state whose inhabitants have dual citizenship and can live out in the world with others or deep in the collaborative, fantastic world of books. Adults are not barred from that state, but it takes real time and peace to get to the border, and for adults such commodities are scarce. Birkerts argues further that the speed of our lives has accelerated to the point where even for children the experience of ‘deep time’ grows rare."

• the relatively small number of adequately-stocked, adequately-staffed and conveniently-located branch libraries;
• the non-uniform and inconvenient-for-many hours that AFPL libraries are open for business;
• a customer-unfriendly online library catalog and a feature-starved, non-interactive library website;
• the lack of a clear, quick way for computer-owning cardholders to electronically request the purchase of a book (or nonbook item) - and the absence of prompt, reliable feedback on the disposition of such a request;
• the lack of year-round ordering of books that results in inordinate delays in books and other items being added to AFPL's collections;
• forcing card-holders to wait a minimum of three days for an item to be transferred from one library branch to another;
• the lack of a drive-up/pickup option to get hold of a library item without finding a parking place and getting out of one's car;
• the incredible cumbersomeness of obtaining an interlibrary loan item, and the lack of publicity about ILL;
• the library's unwillingness to offer library patrons an affordable (or free) books-by-mail service.

I've done the math and here's the bottom line. If you want consistent artistic bang for your buck, skip the movies, forget the theatre and turn off your TV set. Instead, read a book. More specifically, read a novel. More specifically still, read the kind of novel that publishers call “trade fiction.”

Newsflash: Booksales are down because most books suck. Even ignoring the great philosopher Sturgeon's Law that "Ninety percent of everything is crap" - modern publishing is producing more books then ever, therefore they are producing more crap then ever. Even though it is now easier for everyone and their Aunt Helen to write a book and get it published, no one is taking into account whether it SHOULD be published, and the market is flooded. The market is so pumped full that right out of the box a book can be sold for 50% off the cover price in great honking warehouses. [why are books the only thing with prices printed on them?] and don't get me started on the secondary market, as soon as a book leaves the TRADE food chain its value drops like a bowling ball off a dorm roof. You can literally buy a modern first edition for less than an airport fiction paperback. WHY? because the market is flooded and we are up to our ass in books.

And they aren't very good ones either. Is it me? or does it seem that in the last 10 years every editor in America was fired? either that or they all just suck at their jobs. They certainly aren't correcting grammar or coherency. Hell, they aren't even checking to see if what is written in the book didn't come from someone ELSE'S book. These days if I find a mistake that could have been corrected by an editor, I fling the book across the room with great force.

"a gateway to thousands of local bookstores, libraries and book festivals-and to all the author readings, signings, discussions and other events they host."

• Social Networking for Book Lovers
• E-books
• Online Bookstores
• Find the Best Prices for Books
• Audiobooks
• Study Guides and Summaries
• Library Resources
• Bibliography and Research
• Book Exchanges/Swapping
• Online Documents
• What to Read
• Miscellaneous

• Jennifer Schuessler's Bookshelf Etiquette (and its 100+ comments), from the New York Times Book Review's blog Paper Cuts: A Blog about Books
  
  
• Scott McLemee's Bookshelf and Self (and comments from more than three dozen readers) from Inside Higher Education
  
  
• Ezra Klein's Bookshelves (and comments from two dozen readers), from The American Prospect
  
  
• Matt Selman's The Unabridged Rules of [Home] Library Management (and comments from over a dozen readers) from Time Magazine's Nerd World: A Blog about Geek Culture

Writers might be word magicians but we readers are the new alchemists. Without a reader a book is simply a stack of papers dense with type and edged in glue. But when a reader grabs hold of a book, when a reader introduces her mind and heart and body to a book, that book is transformed, becomes something extraordinary.

Readers supply the galvanic human spark that bring these Frankenstein creations we call books to life. Readers transmute cold paper and stale ink into vibrant human gold. Readers are the nervous system of literature and readers alone can reach through time and space and connect one imperfect human soul with another they have never met. They can bridge the spaces between us, all through the simple act of reading.

We readers, I suspect, will be remembered more than any individual writer for safeguarding that delicate web of human interconnectivity that so many forces wish to buy, capture, enslave and mine.

Readers will be remembered long after we are all gone for holding the line against the dehumanising forces of our civilisation. Even if tomorrow all the books of the world disappeared in a flash of woodpulp and binding it would be you, you readers, who would keep the dream of that human alchemy alive.

For it is in the simple act of reading where the living and the dead, the real and the imagined, meet. It is in the simple act of reading where we exercise those two most sacred of human vocations: compassion and creativity. For as we know, without either of these primes there is no possibility for a humanity present or past worth talking about.

Read [Diaz's speech] when you have helped the 100th person log onto Yahoo! Mail, when you have separated your tenth set of teens locked in either battle or lust, when you have reached your breaking point, read this. And remember what we do as librarians and why.