For many years I’ve read Maria Popova’s blog Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings)– which is a weekly blog that’s been around as long as this daily one. I like hers because she’s a reader and so am I. And in blog’s her side bar, I’ve seen this book of hers since 2018, and I finally interlibrary loaned a copy.

It is a compilation she put together, asking all sorts of notable people to write a letter to young readers, about why they should read.  I found it to be wonderful bedtime reading, both thoughtful, fun, and calming.

Across from each letter is a work of art, and it is largely this format that I found made it engaging. (You can see some examples below.) The letters also made me wonder what I would say, but it is comforting that I’m clearly not alone in the love of it.

Here are some of my favorite bits I flagged to share with you:

• Reading… “a vital force, as meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower” Gwendolyn Brooks
• “We need to not fear the future elimination of the book. On the contrary, the more that certain needs for entertainment and education are satisfied through other inventions, the more the book will win back in dignity and authority.” Hermann Hesse
• “We read what we are as much as we are what we read.” Maria Popova
• “Every good book is like this: a self-transcending structure.” Jad Abumrad
• “If you are marginalized or oppressed, insult and degradation are still outside, but they can’t force their way in while you are busy inside your own head.”  Martha Nussbaum
• “Some books are toolkits you take up to fix things, from the most practical to the most mysterious, from your house to your heart, or to make things, from cakes to ships. Some books are wings. Some are horses that run away with you. Some long books are journeys, and at the end you are not the same person you were at the beginning. Some are handheld lights you can shine on almost anything.”
• “Books aren’t like a plate of vegetables that you’re supposed to eat because they are good for you. Books are like an enormous ice cream sundae the size of a mountain. You can eat as much of a book as you want and when you’re full or start to feel disgusting you can put down the book and walk away.” Amanda Palmer
• “Books show us what we all have in common, surrounding us with community we didn’t know we needed. Showing us there is no “other.” Books let us know we are not the center of the universe; the universe has many centers.” Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
• “There are times when dreams sustain us more than facts. To read a book and surrender to a story is to keep our very humanity alive.” Helen Fagin
• “If you read a book, you are never alone. You can go anywhere. Be anyone. Do anything. Inside that book is a whole world. Inside that book, you have friends waiting for you. Inside that book is sanctuary.” Shonda Rhimes
• “Reading is for the brave among us. It teaches us how to love people we don’t know and will probably never meet. It teaches us that we too deserve that same sort of love. That faith is, in fact, the work of being a fully realized person.” Thomas Page McBee
• Every reader should behave like a book, pushing others toward growth, aiming to deepen the most enduring relationship: the one we have with ourselves.” Amanda Stern
• “To write is delight, to read is to plant the seed of endless excitement.” Mary Oliver
• “Reality can get dismal. Nothing will do a better job of rescuing you from reality than a book; it is a good means of escape as your own boat or rocket ship.” Andrew Solomon
• “If you learn to love books, you will never be lonely. You will always have something to look forward to at the end of the day, first thing in the morning, on a trip, at the beach, or anywhere else you can read.” Anne-Marie Slaughter
• “To read is to expose a vulnerability, for at least a brief moment, to surrender to another perspective, to bring it inside yourself and try it on.” Aaron Koblin
• “Try to make reading a priority. Literature will thrill you, nurture your imagination, and solace you through hard times. It is an essential form of befriending yourself for life.”  Natascha McEthone
• “Every species has their superpowers. Fig trees can send their roots more than 200 feet deep in search of the water they need to survive in the desert. Elephant trunks have more than 30,000 muscles allowing them to rip down trees weighing hundreds of pounds but also pluck a ripe berry from a bush without squashing it. What is your superpower? You can create world’s that don’t exist… and more than that you can conjure up that same world in someone else’s mind. ” Chris Anderson
• “In books I discovered that my inside self had a name. It is called a soul. Even more amazing, it turned out that other people had souls too.” William Powers
• “Be bold and playful in your reading!  Fight ancient wars with the Greek heroes, travel to China with Marco Polo, climb a ladder to the moon. Journey to the center of the earth, watch the big bang happen and then wake up in a flower as a bee. ” Samantha Cristoforetti
• “It’s good to try a book that doesn’t instantly feel quite so cozy and approachable. Sometimes its worth pushing yourself past what feels just right, and tackling a book that at first might seem uncomfortable or unfamiliar.” Rebecca Mead
• “To be a reader is indeed a form of friendship all its own, sacred and mysterious. To read is to welcome the mystery of someone else’s imagination into your own. To read is to experience the most humanizing of surprises: that someone else’s far away mind has given rise to words with their own distinct voice and color and sound, and yet their words touch and echo and mirror  places deep inside you.” Krista Tippett
• “I am a slow reader. I like to savor, get immersed. To not let a well honed sentence transport me to the realms intended seems a waste of the writer’s efforts and of a potential joy.” Sarah Lewis
• “The expansiveness that comes from thinking someone else’s’ thoughts and seeing through someone elses’ eyes is the chief gift bestowed by the written word. Reading helps us “get” people. Daily life is full of truths unseen, connections unappreciated, mysteries unexplored. A life can be lived happily and honorably within the fishbowl of its own natural perceptions, but there is nothing like reading to remove scales from the glass. An expanded awareness of how things connect, how the world is organized, and how people behave is of immense strategic value when it comes to accomplishing goals and pursuing dreams. Reading unlocks doors.”  Baba Brinkman
• “We wouldn’t need books quite so much if everyone around us understood us well. But they don’t. Even those who love us get us wrong. Books explain us to ourselves and to others, and make us feel less strange, less isolated, less alone. Books are a perfect cure for loneliness. They can be our very closest friends.” Alain de Botton
• “Don’t let others make books irrelevant. ” Steven Heller
• “You need to learn how to distinguish what is real. To suss out the legitimacy of a point of view. To create your own.” Meehan Crist
• “The more books you read, the more you will pay attention. The more you will wonder and discover. The best books will become like talismans, touchstones, prayers that imprint the soul.” Jacqueline Novogratz
• “You define the experience of the book. Every book you read could only be read in precisely that way by you.” Janna Levin

You or yours might also enjoy The Velocity of Being. It is expensive, but it would make a beautiful gift book to a young person, or even yourself. All proceeds go to the New York Public Library. I give it 5 stars, although it is in a genre all of its own.