On my way to dinner on the other side of the city yesterday, I stopped off at one of my favorite haunts, W.H. Smith bookstore on the rue de Rivoli, to see the new books and magazines. It’s nice to see that people still read. Traditional paper books, I mean, and magazines of which there were many. I read that people today read books from their telephones. Does anyone other than me find this shocking? How can book-reading from a mobile phone offer the same kind of concentrated reading … or pleasure … as from a paper book, or even a larger-screen Kindle?? One of my favorite pleasures in life is hanging out in bookstores. Not to mention the smell and feel of a brand new book and turning its pages. For those mobile phone book-readers, I guess you could say – at least they’re reading, no matter what the device.

“The future of digital reading is on the phone,” says a Simon & Schuster publisher. “It’s not the e-reader that will be driving future book sales, but the phone.”

Anyway, more on W.H. Smith later, plus my dinner in a delightful Sicilian restaurant with my Swedish friend, Andreas. Right now I want to share with you this wholly inspiring TED TALK by author, Lidia Yuknavitch. 

From Wikipedia – Lidia Yuknavitch (born June 18, 1963) is an American writer, teacher and editor based in Oregon. She is the author of the memoir The Chronology of Water, and the novels The Small Backs of Children and Dora: A Headcase.

Yuknavitch grew up in a home where her father verbally, physically, and sexually abused her and her sister, while her alcoholic mother did not intervene. As a teen, she was noticed by a “caring and methodical coach” who helped her move towards her dream of becoming a competitive swimmer…

“I’m a card-carrying misfit,” Yuknavitch says.

I was very moved by this talk, and found this woman to be very courageous.