Above my desk at home is a single pine shelf that holds a row of books, books which through the years have meant a whole world to me. You may have such a collection of such treasures, too, volumes by favorite writers of poetry, prose, narrative, non-fiction. Some of my books are so old that the covers are frayed and the pages yellowing. There is a volume I read for the first time last summer that is crisp and clean. Some have markers to note a beloved section or a poem I'd like to find with dispatch. Some are helpful in a direct manner, some reflective.

My line-up includes Strunk and White's Elements of Style, Willa Cather's My Antonia, St. Exupery's The Little Prince. William Zinnser's Willie & Dwike is the one I read last summer. I have Edna St. Vincent Millay's Collected Poems, in which …