Librovore

Jim Shields, the well-known bibliophag (or shall we say librovore), tells us that at 1303 North Second street he has seen the following sign, well-made and neatly painted: When Alliterations Are Completed, etc.

Like any honest bibliophag—or shall I say librovore—I can never see anyone reading a book without a passion to find out, by means foul or fair, what it is. So I stopped and said, “Well, Sister, what are you reading?”

Slogans remind us, Logan Pearsall Smith’s Unforgotten Years has been postponed until the New Year: but you can put in the time reading Mr. Smith’s Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton written long ago but recently revived among a few librovores.

I see it this way: When I was a kid I was bookish, extremely literate for my age, the usual cliched embryonic SF reader. Of course, the oiks didn't want to know about me, and those that did only wanted to beat me up. So I avoided the thickos and sought my own kind. When I think of "kids when I was a kid", I'm thinking of those relatively smart librovores that I mixed with.

What will die-hard librovores — which make up the Kindle faithful — think of their beloved e-reader suddenly becoming more computer than book?