And, you’re right, the book is a pretty wonderful content delivery device. There are only certain reads that I can do on the iPhone. Lapham’s Quarterly, for example, will always and only be a print experience.

You know, I had offered The Road to Babak. Sounds like I’m lucky that he had already read it. But really, great books – like great ideas and bottles of wine – deserve to be shared. No one owns a book … they just travel through our hands.

Then there’s the loooong return flight, which is absolutely brutal if you don’t have a good book (there are only so many crappy movies one can watch).

And finally, there’s just something about flipping through an actual book. I know I’m a cliched Luddite when it comes to this, but Kindle/Stanza/whatever will never compare to the feeling of flipping through the pages, cracking open the spine, dog earing, underlining, etc. So all this is to say, if you think I’m going to stop sending you actual books, you’re crazy (and please don’t go leaving my copy of The Road in some Ukrainian hostel!)