Apparently someone forgot to inform my neighborhood that reading is dying. On my way home tonight, I came upon a small crowd that had assembled to dig through the library’s recycling.
“Are those novels?” the woman walking next to me asked, her voice rising excitedly, as she stopped to pick through the books herself.
Now I’m sitting in my apartment, looking at stacks and stacks of unread galleys — about two hundred arrive in the mail every month nowadays — and wondering if the people are still out there on the sidewalk, searching for something to read.