This is a book about books, about the pleasures, passions, and rewards of reading, about authors dedicated to writing and readers who delight in words in the right order. It contains a rich selection devoted to this seductive subject, from Calvino's meditation on selecting a title in a bookstore to Woolf's essays on the joys of "the common reader," from Schwartz's "Ruined by Reading" to Eco's "How to Organize a Public Library." The book is illuminated by sixteen full-color paintings by Bascove, who here serves as editor, illustrator, and primum mobile. Produced to the highest standards, it is not only a gift for the literary, but also an inducement to the diffident.