"Reading Books is Fundamental"

 "The first thing I can remember buying for myself, aside from candy, of course, was not a toy. It was a book."

A flat-out wonderful column by Charles M Blow, from the New York Times, on the value and power of reading. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/opinion/blow-reading-books-is-fundamental.html?emc=eta1&_r=0