Answers to yesterday's quiz: Jimmy Bean; Gilbert Blythe; Peter -don't think his last name was ever mentioned. I would be so grateful to be corrected. So, we/you/I keep asking: how can The Book ever disappear? Well, they're talking about the physical book, as opposed to all the electronic ways something like a book can be read. I'm a member of The Folio Society, for a long time now. The book lovers and purveyors there used to issue a flyer about twice a year and the big deal was Christmas. Now they seem to have flyers and announcements every month. It's their answer to e-books. Instead of buying a mess of words to read on an evanescent "page", why not buy and own a REAL book, with handsome illustrations, elegant fonts, lovely stock, a book worth handling, loving and treasuring? And keeping. The e-readers offer services: their versions of bookmarks, highlights, notes and so on. I use the smallest post-it notes in my books as well as pens. Some books look like benign hedgehogs with all the little papers sticking out of them ("Read me! Read me!). When I go back to them I have a guided tour, a digested series of thoughts, with my comments on the side (I like wide margins) so that I can pick up where I left off. I have been doing that a lot recently, picking up, because I'm preparing to write a new book. I don't treat fiction books like this, for the sake of other readers. But my reference books and non-fiction: essays, criticism, memoirs, diaries, reports and speculations, these are all annotated. When the University of Manitoba and I were first negotiating the acquisition of my papers for the archives, I warned them that my women's diaries are all marked up "Good!." I was told. "That will give valuable insights into your mind." (Makes me feel like a cave. Bring a flashlight.) I'm grateful they didn't think I was defacing my books. I wouldn't do that. Books are precious.

A friend told me that the mere act of buying a book made him feel as if he had read it and I realized with a shock that the same thing happened to me. It's true, a book often speaks to you, even before you've been properly introduced. That's why we keep books, books that we've read, because they keep talking, the vibes (horrible term) ricochet around the room and in your brain. Quite comforting. I have talking rooms. With 22 bookcases in my apartment, most of them floor to ceiling, - last count, but I don't count three upper shelves in my kitchen where the (reduced) collection of cookbooks hums - every room is full of friends, even the ones I haven't met yet, i.e. read. I used to own every book I had bought or been given but after my husband died and I had to downsize, I began to cull the books, filling boxes destined for a community book sale. I woke the first night after I started, saying, "Elsie Dinsmore! I really need Elsie Dinsmore!" You won't think that's funny if you never heard of Elsie Dinsmore, a very earnest book for little girls. Well, I went on culling and I moved and I started to write again and I was writing a piece about the boyfriends of some of our childhood heroines, but, you see, I no longer owned their eponymous books. This was in the days before online research. I thought I remembered them but I wanted to be sure so I phoned the public library and asked for help. What was Pollyanna's boyfriend's name? Anne's (of Green Gables)? Heidi's? Can you remember? Answers in the next blog.