I couldn’t agree more with your argument here, Clementine. In my humble opinion books are one of the most valuable resources in our entire cultural armamentarium. In fact I can’t imagine a world without the following: 1) books, 2) dogs, 3) good coffee and 4) fine wines from the Rhône river regions of Europe. [Note the order specified!] As I read your comments on our many-paged printed friends, I had to chuckle, since one of the extended questions that the company providing genetic DNA assays asked me in a series of interrogatives, was “Do you ever read books?” The chuckle was prompted by my reflection on the fact that I am an obsessive bibliophile with a personal library spanning all subjects and running to about several thousand individual volumes. Do I ever read a book?! GAAK! And yes, in the doctor’s waiting room, while everyone else has their smartphones out and are focused intently on them, I am one of the few holdouts who keeps his phone holstered and has my nose deeply thrust into a book. One of the chief benefits that such omniverous reading habits provoke is that I usually can’t read more than a couple of a chapters at a time (of anything) before I have to rush off to my PC and start writing myself. Sadly, as the electronic age of social media and the internet continue to grow exponentially, the simple reading of books seems to diminish directly proportionately. Let’s hope that isn’t as true as it may seem, eh? Thanks for being a fellow ‘friend of books’, Clementine!