Howard Spring (1889–1965)

Recently, a dear friend of mine passed away. His wife, knowing that we both shared many interests, said that I should come by the house and pick up some books. "My children will throw them away when I'm gone; they don't read."

Back at her house, while I was browsing my friend's shelves, she picked up a book from one of her own shelves and said, "This author writes as it should be! One gets lost in his books." It was the way she said it that stuck in my mind, and I decided later to buy "My Son, My Son" – not from her, as she would not sell it. I opened the first page the day the book arrived, just out of curiosity since I had no intention to read it then; I had plenty on my reading list already. A few minutes later, I was no longer standing, and two weeks later, I had finished it.

Since then, three additional books have found their way into my collection, and I'm confronted with a delightful dilemma: to succumb to the temptation of reading them right away or to resist and preserve them for later. So far, it seems highly likely that I will miserably fail the Stanford marshmallow experiment!… (meer)