So this is depressing -- book reading is apparently becoming a lost art in America. A report by the NEA finds that Americans (surprise surprise) aren't big readers -- it finds that less than half of us read literature in 2002.

This saddens me. I admit I'm an enormous book geek -- I'm passionate about books and words and language and punctuation. Talk to me about the semicolon and I'll get all shivery. Books and writing are intrinsically part of who I am and how I experience the world. A life without books in it is just...empty in my eyes.

I once had a friend who, when looking at my overstuffed bookshelves, comment that she'd rather live certain experiences rather than just read about them. That's fine, I guess. But for me reading about experiences and living them are closely intertwined. Literature chronicles our lives, our cultures and our experiences -- it makes the world a more fantastic and imaginative place to live, which in turn helps us to view and experience it in different ways never before possible.

I'm buckin' the trend. I'm a rebel with a literary cause. I'm heading to a bookstore this weekend and doing my part to get between the pages of a good novel.