p.s. I have a friend who posts random quotes du jour, and this happens to be the offering for the day, which I will happily subscribe to by way of refuting that reading is passive and mindless consumption:

"A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones." -- Abraham Lincoln, address given before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, in Milwaukee, 1859-09-30