The book deserves a shelf.

When I was in New York a few days ago, I noticed a girl reading a book on the platform while waiting for the train.

I stared at her indecently. Nobody reads paper books anymore!

I read! I collect! I like having them!

But I'm old-fashioned...

The sight of the girl with the book touched me - a lady with a weasel in the twenty-first century New York’s jungle.

Books are like cruise boats on the rushes, untouched by civilization, wild lakes. It's not just about sailing. The most important thing is how you do it, the experiences, and the excitement of your journey.

The views will be the same from the new laminate construction, but you will never experience what is inherent in old boats: the smell of resin, the creak of the mast in the foot, the groan of the taut planks at a high heel, the sound of water hitting the wooden hull with more love.

You will learn the same from e-books or audiobooks, but you will feel that they don’t have a soul.

I like to rearrange pages, I am soothed by the rustle of paper, the smell of printing, smoothness, or roughness of the pages. The size and type of fonts are a soothing aspect of the reading experience.

Having a book on the bedside table by my bed allows me to fall asleep easier. Just as children like to fall asleep in the company of their favorite stuffed animal, I need a book to feel safe.

A dozen or so copies of bestsellers downloaded on the phone are not a sufficient substitute. They are cold, isolated, completely impersonal - characterless, lifeless, non-existent.

Each of the hundreds of books that stand on the shelves in my room has its own identity, a cover that represents the interior, colorful, attractive, tempting, with the author's name, proudly displayed.

Each of them wants to encourage, interest themselves, as if saying: Touch me, open me, see what I have to offer. Like exotic women of the night shrouded in mystery and secret that you greedily covet.

Books are there to be touched, to be immersed in stories often told on yellowed pages.

Sometimes I think books don't like libraries. The library is like an orphanage - the waning hope for a better tomorrow drives out endless horizons of possibilities into the recycling paper bin. I don't like libraries.

Books are not meant to be shared. They want to belong to their place, their address.

Each of my books is a kind of personal stamp in my life passport - I bought each one at some important moment, on the threshold of a new experience or chapter of life. I have one that I bought when I was opening a new business when I had a 10-carat diamond in my hand for the first time, and I wanted to learn more about this hardest mineral when I felt a foreign language or a new computer program; when I was flying to Florida for a few days of vacation, when I wanted to sew pajamas for my three-year-old daughter (actually she wanted it, I wanted to be a good mom).

I remember exactly when and why I bought each of my books, or who gave it to me. The book is an incredibly special gift. If you got a book from me, it means that you are worth it, it means that I believe that you will appreciate it as much as I do.

I love books in their original form, written, printed, tangible, with their intimate softness or distanced hardness.

A book is a magical SOMETHING that can transfer in time, in dimension, opens the rusty spaces of the imagination, oil the screws of the present so that you can get out of it. Without leaving the bed, I can witness the history of dinosaurs, sink into the blue waters of the ocean on a distant continent or feel the adrenaline while traveling through the galaxies in a spaceship. I can be wherever I want!

A book is a value that defines humanity.

It doesn't belong to an app on the phone. My book belongs to me, on the shelf in my room. Sometimes I think the shelf misses the book I'm reading right now. I'm sure they miss the neighboring books because they can't stand up straight.

A book always reveals a new face of someone's truth, tells stories that have happened to someone or could have happened to someone. It is like a hope charmer hidden in the colorfully conveyed image of the author's vision. Thanks to books, I develop my own worldview, grow emotionally, understand more with each chapter I read. There, I always find the answer to everything - the magic of life expressed in a million different ways.

In the electronic book,

I cannot sink or swim. It disperses the hardness, commercialism, and plasticity of the device on which I read it. Too perfectly smooth, even polished text surface clears the character leaving it completely without a character.

It's like a robot serving dinner - it'll probably give you what you order, but you know it can't understand your palette of flavors.

Electronic book substitute doesn't work for me! I tried!

I want to feel it, hold it in my hands, enjoy the rustle of pages chewed by the wind when you want to squeeze through it unnoticed and read something.

I will share with the wind ...