• Surprise: Philip Roth is not a fan of e-books and “the distracting influences of modern technology, which he feels diminishes the ability to appreciate the beauty and aesthetic experience of reading books on paper.” He says, “I like to read in bed at night and I like to read with a book. I can’t stand change anyway.”

• Rob Sheffield, whose first book was about love and tragedy and nostalgia and mix tapes, and whose latest book is called Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, does a playlist for the Times, noting, “Writing about music and writing about memory are basically the same thing.”

• Thank you, James Collins, for pointing out that few people remember everything they read, but that books are worth reading anyway.

• Frank Kovarick definitely remembers The Hardy Boys.

• The Times profiles sidewalk book salesman Charles Mysak, who is depressed about the Barnes & Noble by Lincoln Center closing, and asks, “If a saloon and bookstore can’t make it on the Upper West Side, what better evidence do you need than that of the decline of artistic and free thought? If this is happening here, what must you see in the hinterlands of America?”

• But why stand out on the street if you have a bar-code scanner? Writing at Slate, Michael Savitz is a little embarrassed by his method of buying used books to sell, but it does the job:

The book merchant of the high-cultural imagination is a literate compleat and serves the literate. He doesn’t need a scanner, because he knows more than the scanner knows. I fill a different niche—I deal in collectible or meaningful books only by accident. I’m not deep, but I am broad. My customer is anyone who needs a book that I happen to find and can make money from.

…I rely on a technological castoff to search through other people’s castoff merchandise….My work is crowded by artifacts of thought and expression which the culture hasn’t wanted to conserve.