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.