"I remember one evening when my father was saying good night to me, we had, as it was our custom, what he called a 'brief evening chat.' Putting on a serious face and feeling a bit nervous at the prospect of challenging what by then I knew to be a much-cherished activity, I managed to voice my query: 'Why do Mom and you read out loud to each other?'
"I can still remember my father's words as he tried to tell me, with parent conviction, that novels contain 'reservoirs of wisdom,' out of which he and mother were drinking. A visual image suddenly crossed my mind — books floating like flotsam and jetsam on Houghton's Pond, near Milton, Massachusetts, where we lived. I never told my father what appeared to me, but he knew its essence by my glazed eyes. He made his pitch anyway: 'Your mother and I feel rescued by these books. We read them gratefully. You'll also be grateful one day to the authors.' "
