BOOK HUGGERS MAY 2012 SELECTED QUOTE:

FROM JON REINER

I wrote my memoir in the 42nd Street building's Rose Reading Room, an old-world hall like the dining room of a transatlantic liner. Big room, big ideas, big words. Libraries house books, but that's become beside the point, as the Central Library Plan makes clear. The conflict is much bigger than just a punch-up between a gang of New York bibliophiles. When e-books conquer paper and Google digitizes the world's collections, the impact will make Caesar's torching of the Ancient Library of Alexandria feel like a sunburn. Who's going to need a bricks-and-mortar library when you've got all the world's titles on a single device? Three hundred million dollars for a coffee bar? Traveling the country on a book tour, I've seen the contemporary collision of past, present and future up close./Jon Reiner, May 23, 2012