"Books are the carriers of tradition and the seeds of change; a source of solitary enjoyment and communal celebration; beautiful physical objects and abstract spaces for language and thought; work and pleasure; desirable and burdensome; always doomed and always thriving; cheap thrills and pricey enlightenment; worth talking about, worth fighting for, worth loving, worth sharing, worth making a life about."--Jessica Stockton, events coordinator at McNally Robinson Booksellers, New York City, in a Forbes special report on books.