Beautiful, Nose-Tickling, Irreplaceable Dust

I have spent the last week and a half in Birmingham, UK for the induction to my PhD program at the University of Birmingham.  Much of this time was dedicated to ensuring that the new doctoral students would not suffer the academic version of 'culture shock' after our two weeks on campus are over (a large cohort is Distance Learning students), but I have also spent a significant portion of my time in the campus Main Library.  It's a glorious building full of floors and floors of books, periodicals, and journals.  (And it doesn't hurt that there is a delicious café on the ground floor...)

Of course most of the time I've spent in the library has been focused on research and writing--although I spent all of today dealing with course assignments and student questions (I'm teaching my courses via DL/online platform for the two weeks I'm gone), but I've definitely spent more than a few minutes simply drooling over all the beautiful books.  Please don't misunderstand me: I love my iPad.  This [over-priced] magical tablet allows me access to millions upon millions of books; however, I will never, ever accept a touchscreen as an equitable replacement for the texture of paper.  True: I've sneezed more in the past few hours in the library than I normally do in a week, but this seems a small price to pay to be in the presence of so many glorious tomes.  Caxtons, caxtons, everywhere! 

I am an admitted, unabashed bibliophile.  --A sneezy bibliophile, but one who will defend the importance of paper no matter how brilliant the technology is to come.

Today's moral: Read a book, a real one, one that has a possibility of giving you a paper-cut.