Dear Sir or Madame...

The postcard began, "Dear Sir or Madame, we regret to inform you that effective immediately, Metropolitan Home will no longer be published. We apologize for this inconvenience and offer to fulfill the remainder of your subscription"...blah blah blah. Apologize for this inconvenience?! Apologize for this inconvenience?! Don't they know I have been subscribing to that magazine for almost 15 years? I don't want some other magazine! (Insert adult laying on floor, thrashing about on her back, pounding fists on floor....) I want my Metropolitan Home! Don't they know that this is the THIRD magazine that I adore & ordered to be unceremoniously & prematurely guillotined? (May you rest in peace dearest Domino & Blueprint.) I know that (at least I think I know) that the hallowed pages of Martha Stewart Living will go on, but what will come of so many smaller publications?


In a sort of call to arms, bloggers from East Side Bride and Pretty Pretty Paper have started " I Pledge to Read the Printed Word" where you do just that. Where after you read my blog (ha ha...and the others that you like) you look away from the computer screen and pick up an old fashioned book and lose yourself for awhile. Feel the pages, smell that freshly-bought or faintly musty borrowed book smell, crochet a bookmark. I am a bookworm by all rights, but I will admit that my eyes have been fixed more often to my computer than to the pages of a good old fashioned read. As technology moves us helplessly forward- I do believe that there is need to stand our ground. Books are (and I don't mean to sound overly sappy here-) at the foundation of who I am. Don't you remember cozy, dimly lit bedtime stories of Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are and the fantastic ramblings of Dr. Seuss ? Could you imagine being without them?

I know that I have played spy right along with Harriet, cursed that brat of a sister Amy when Laurie realized he loved her instead of Jo, and dreamt countless hours away, over and over again with my childhood heroine, Anne. They are interwoven into the fibers of me.

Even as an adult, I still drown myself in books. Where would I be without Harry Potter? (Did you cry when Severus Snape killed Albus Dumbledore? Come on, I know you did.) I have run away from Orks with Bilbo, ridden on the panserbjorn with Lyra, had my heart broken with Elinor Dashwood, flown on a broom with Elphaba, explored 100 Acre Wood with Piglet & Pooh and survived Scylla & Charybdis with Odysseus. I could go on and on about the adventures I have had because they keep going on and on. What amazing lives we are allowed to lead. Can you imagine not having actual pages to turn to see what would come next in our own next chapter?

I have promised myself, in addition to the boys- and now to all of you- to visit our library more often. To purchase more books. To read a little something that is not on the computer screen everyday. Because we owe it to ourselves. Don't we? The books pictured above are from Penguin Classics-with beeee-u-tiful cloth bound covers created by Coralie Bickford Smith. Penguin is releasing five more of these beauties next month including 3 of my favorite girlfriends, Alice, Emma and Lady Chatterly. They make a fantastic gift (only $20!) for yourself, for a friend or for me. I'm just saying.