When I think about the things I did in my childhood, athletic pursuits aside, the activity that stands out in my mind is reading. I lived at the library, loved going to bookstores, loved being read to, and loved the Accelerated Reader program my elementary school participated in to reward reading. I won contests at Barnes and Noble when I was younger, and as I became older, I yearned to be one of the girls who worked at a bookstore, drank coffee, and knew everything.

I achieved part of that goal this past summer by working full-time at the Barnes and Noble near my house. I still haven't begun to know everything, but I did feel a little bit smarter every single day I showed up at work. It didn't feel like work either.

I guess I've never envisioned a job as something simply fun and satisfying, nor did I figure I would like every person I worked with. I guess with the only jobs to compare it to being Cinnabon and a credit union though, the bookstore would be a dream come true.

Anyway, I loved being surrounded by books, learning about good, new authors from random people, getting excited with customers over the release of a much anticipated novel... (Yes, I'm a nerd). I did get knocked back down to earth every so often by the people who came in declaring they hated books and needed to find something short and easy. I knew that some people didn't like reading, but I just didn't understand how or why, especially when surrounded by so many options.

I guess that's why it also shocks me that you can buy "books by the foot" out of catalogs, presumably to make you "look smart" and cultured. I just don't understand the point though. What if someone visited your house and happened to be a literary buff who wanted to engage in a discussion of a particular book or two that they'd seen on your shelves. Would those books we worth anything when you had to admit to never having read them? (Or, for that matter, anything on the shelves).

Then there's the recent marketing push that the New York Times covered in today's newspaper of coordinating books with the merchandise offered at clothing boutiques, carwashes, butchers, cooking stores, home furnishings stores, and more.

At the surface, I see it as a good thing, because it reaches a market that might never set foot in a bookstore and it does increase book sales. Underneath however, it exposes a bigger problem: people aren't reading and buying books like they used to.

Okay, so the advent of the technological age has shifted people away from print sources: we're blogging and getting a lot of news online, we're using our iPods, Blackberries, and cell phones incessantly. But are people reading online books to complete the shift? They're out there, but I haven't met a single person who does. So, essentially, we're just reading less.

When publishers are willing to change the color of a book jacket to match the sweater it will sit next to in Anthropologie, we're reached a whole new level of superficiality. Whatever happened to "Don't judge a book by its cover?"