Verlyn Klinkenborg:

Sometimes the best way to understand the present is to look at it from the past.

In the early 19th century, literate families and friends read aloud to each other as a matter of habit.

The way we listen to books today has been de-socialized, stripped of context, which has the solitary virtue of being extremely convenient. But listening aloud, valuable as it is, isn’t the same as reading aloud.

You can easily make the argument that reading silently is an economic artifact, a sign of a new prosperity beginning in the early 19th century and a new cheapness in books. The same argument applies to listening to books on your iPhone. But what I would suggest is that our idea of reading is incomplete, impoverished, unless we are also taking the time to read aloud.

Steven Johnson:

The book's migration to the digital realm will not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but will likely change the way we read, write and sell books in profound ways. It will expand the universe of books at our fingertips, and transform the solitary act of reading into something far more social. It will give writers and publishers the chance to sell more obscure books, but it may well end up undermining some of the core attributes that we have associated with book reading for more than 500 years.

David Lazarus:

To be sure, time marches on.

Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

Mark Bittman:

I believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life.