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Laura Miller’s essay in this past Sunday’s NYTBR, “The Well-Tended Bookshelf,” made me think for a few moments.

Miller finds that the occasion of having to move and reorganize her book collection (which is formidable; she is, after all, the literary critic for Salon.com) forces her to consider what should stay and what should go, and she discusses what books mean to their owners, how books define their owners, and why some books stand the test of time.

I have plenty of thoughts on all of those, but what really grabbed me and stayed with me was in her last paragraph, when she reminds us of Dr. Johnson’s apercu that second marriages represent the triumph of hope over experience. “So, too, do my bookshelves,” writes Miller, referring to the fact that as long as she has some unread books, her time on this mortal coil has not expired. I was caught be the phrase “triumph of hope over experience,” because it seems to me that that holds a certain key for the entire publishing industry right now.

The experiences we are all having are bleak. Profits are down, and so are readers in general. But did any of us choose to be readers because it would make us financially solvent? We became readers because, my friends, of the hope embodied in the pages we read. The forms that hope take can be very different: escape, fame, solitude, theories, beauty… However, hope — “the thing with feathers,” according to Emily Dickinson — leads us to believe in something, and for most people reading this post, that something was books.

So reading the NYT again today, I was glad to see this. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Hope, that feathered something, has a way of being contagious. Please take a look at the link and tell me what you think. No quiz — just more dialogue…