literacy (n.) the ability to read and write --Webster's New World Dictionary

Piles and piles of books. Stacked everywhere, in no particular order, thick as "Don Quixote" to the wafer--thinness of "Siddharthe", covering every subject imaginible.

Every book is an adventure waiting to be taken. Every adventure taken is a thousand new things learned, another world explored. Where else can you get so much bang for the buck?

And they can be had for a song. Gems tucked in cardboard boxes at garage sales priced a quarter; warehouse-sized used book stores with shelves bursting; libraries full of titles waiting their turn to be borrowed. Where do you want to go today?

Whether you are looking to be informed or entertained, you can find it in a book. No commercials, no mind-numbing glare of a screen. Reading keeps us mentally sharp, forces us to think for ourselves, sparks our imagination.

It's the brillance of Mark Helprin and Annie Dillard. The simple elegance of Hemingway. The timelessness of Dostoyevsky and William Faulkner. It's the beauty of John Nicholas' New Mexico Trilogy and the social commentary of John Irving's "The Cider House Rules". The genius of Nabokov. It's reading Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday" on a third-class bus somewhere in Belize and Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano" at a fish camp as the salmon pass us by.

It's no mistake that the book is always better than the movie!

Reading and writing are the purest form of our first-amendment rights. Literature has documented and defined our history and provoked change by constantly pushing the envelope.

Alone on the frozen ice of Tustumena Lake, enveloped by the stillness and quiet of the woods, I pulled out the copy of "Welden" that I carried in my sled. Sitting on the shoreline, surrounded by my dogs, I sat and read, changing my life forever.

Gus Guenther

Ages 31-45