What is it like to finish a novel? The first time you do it, you feel utter euphoria, and you should. Unfortunately, what follows isn't always instant acceptance by an agent, an editor, or even your beta readers and friends.

Where are book lovers gathering these days with less and less bookstores around? And where will they gather in years to come as technology continues to change the way we live?

I am a fast reader. By nature or nurture, I cannot say. My mother is a fast reader, as is my eldest son (he is a very fast reader). I've always felt...

Going through my first Kickstarter campaign, I learned a lot that I wanted to share with others considering this route to crowdfund a novel or writing project:

A lot of my bookworm qualities and habits stem from a childhood surrounded by and bolstered by the stacks of books my mother read. While the whole family was distinctly bookish -- we really have more books than is healthy -- my mom was book hoarder in charge.

Something strange happened to me around when I started college: I stopped reading books. Not "I stopped reading." Not "I stopped reading stories." Not "I stopped reading for long periods of time without interruption." I just, specifically, stopped reading books.

If you are a female author, you are much more likely to get a package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality. We're the high fructose corn syrup of literature, even when our products are the same.

We all remember our first time. Mine was in 10th grade AP English in 1963. I was almost about to swear off reading and AP English when I stumbled upon a particular short story, maybe one of the shorter stories ever written, that grabbed me and wouldn't let go.

There will be those who'll argue that a tablet or a video can do the same things, but there's something so tactile, so wonderful about holding a book, turning it around to show its pictures, holding one side of the book and a child gripping the other, turning paper pages.

From childhood, books help us travel in our minds. But many of our favorite children's books can inspire actual travel. Cheapflights.co.uk and Neomam ...

In contemporary Maine, a teenage boy's racially-charged prank prompts his New York attorney uncles to converge on the town of their youth in Elizabeth Strout's latest, The Burgess Boys, but it's the sister who never left who understands alienation best.

The books that change our lives. It sounds like the dramatic segue into the credits of a soap opera, but it's kind of true right? There are those books that change the way you see the world, a person or yourself that stay with you forever.

Adapted from PRESENT SHOCK: WHEN EVERYTHING HAPPENS NOW by Douglas Rushkoff by arrangement with Current, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., Copy...