  A friend sent me this essay, and it is eloquent, if a little technophobe. I don't like the imagery of books pitted against technology. Rather than the death nell of all that is good and pure, technology--like books--presents more choices for people, more depth in humanity's range from bad and empty to good and pure. Time was, the novel would be the end of books. But time changed, and so should we. Likewise, books are the only refuge from real time only for people who live unaware of the bounty around us. A child's smile, a touching sunset, a man's last breath are all beyond real time. I like to remember that part of the most recent Star Trek movie (Yvonne, which one is it? ), where Jean Luke stopped time out of his love for a woman. The moment I exchanged my wedding vows with John felt like that. As did the first weeks I held each of my children. As did the days surrounding the death of our unborn daughter, Grace.
Like even the sand in the hourglass had stopped falling. Moments like these become selective if we stop seeking them out. I hope I never do, but it does get hard to remember. I should make a pop-up reminder in my calendar to keep thinking of them. That would be the perfect marriage of real time and selective time! urlLink Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms : "Reading may be the last secretive behavior that is neither pathological nor prosecutable.
It is certainly the last refuge from the real-time epidemic. For the stream of a narrative overflows the banks of the real. Story strips its reader, holding her in a place time can%92t reach. A book%92s power lies in its ability to erase us, to expand or contract without limit, to circle inside itself without beginning or end, to defy our imaginary timetables and lay us bare to a more basic ticking. " 
