Month: October 2008

With everything that is going on this week, it would be a real shame not to remind ourselves that intellectual freedom must always be defended and to reminded ourselves of the great pleasures and solace of reading.

I am a voracious reader. It is not often when I don’t have reading material close by and is probably the biggest reason why I can seriously claim to have never been bored.

My parents are great readers. They, too, always have reading material close by and they passed on their fierce love of reading and of books. I learned to read early, because I badly wanted to be able to sit with them in the evening and turn the pages of these books. They taught me how to talk about books and information — especially how to value them both, how to be passionate about them, and how to look at them critically. The house is full of books — some quite scholarly as you might expect from 2 PhDs — and it was just fine to pick anything off of the shelve and delve in. The day that I was eligible to get my own library card was almost as momentous as the day I got my driver’s license. Both of my parents are political junkies and news and politics and other incendiary topics are actually welcome at the dinner table — just be able to keep up your end. As long as you can defend your points, it is fun and freewheeling — to this day I’ve friends who angle for invites to big deal dinners at my parents’ because it is such a wide-ranging and passionate conversation about just about anything.