A Reader’s Bill of Rights.

Here’s another version.

I like these. Several of my books at home contain bookmarks that have been stuck mid-book for years. I usually feel guilty when I don’t finish a book — and when it’s a book I’ve paid for, I feel cheated as well. But I’ve been taking books out of the library with more frequency lately. It feels so old-fashioned — do people even go to their neighborhood libraries anymore? (When I was a kid, there were these TV commercials for the Encyclopedia Brittanica. One of them had this boy in a yellow raincoat, walking through the rain, saying, “I’d better get to the library before it closes!” Ahh, those pre-Google days.) Even today, neighborhood libraries make me feel like a kid — the smell of a book that hasn’t been taken out in 10 years, the sound of a creaky swinging door, the feel of a crinkly plastic dustjacket.

Libraries go hand-in-hand with the Reader’s Bill of Rights. The best thing about libraries, of course, is that the books are free. Because you don’t have to pay for them, you can engage in no-risk reading. If you don’t like a book, you can just return it. And you don’t have to treat it like a Fabergé egg while you’re reading it in hopes that Barnes & Noble will take it back.

No-risk reading enables adventurous reading. Last week, inspired by an Ask MetaFilter thread, I took out The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, by Richard Dawkins. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it, and I’m bored, so I’m going to return it and maybe get something else. I’m glad I got to experience Dawkins, though.

The Reader’s Bill of Rights is liberating, as any bill of rights should be. I still feel bad about not finishing a book, especially when I’m 2/3 done with it — what if I’d miss a terrific or enlightening paragraph or concept? On the other hand, there are so many books out there to try, and if one book isn’t doing it for me, another one will.

Life’s too short for boring books.