It is said that this motto was over the portal to the great library of Alexandria, Egypt. Cicero said that books are "windows to the soul." I like this metaphor because I envision a two-way window where the soul looks out as well as nourishes within. As readers we discover the richness of the written word and the rewards of self-reflection.

As booksellers, we are committed to providing you with our selections to amuse, inform, enrich, and edify.

On a framed poster in our Duck store, we have this great quote from historian Barbara Tuchman: Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world, and "lighthouses erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print!

We Are the Stories We Tell

Holden Caulfield said, "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours." J.D. Salinger.

Reading groups and book clubs thrive on the Outer Banks and everywhere. Recommending titles to and receiving recommendations from our customers is a great mutual benefit.

Books speak most powerfully of what a human being can be. They dramatize the utmost any of us is capable of in love, suffering and knowledge.

Eavesdropping on reading groups has convinced me that it is not primarily the writerly talents of authors being discussed; rather it is the stories being shared. Readers ruminate about characters, about what they did and why - establish emotional connection; not just to the characters but to the others who are reading. There is the empathic leap of understanding that through knowing one another we can know ourselves. No serious reader would ever question, whether or not books have influenced their lives - only of how and in what ways. We are not reading but are holding a conversation with the author.

As Umberto Eco says in the Name of the Rose, "The good book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in turn speak of things."

The Person Who Can Read and Does Not is No Better Than Those Who Cannot Read At All.

Reading cultivates us beyond the commonplace of everyday life. Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but, most important, it makes homes for us everywhere.

Every time you open a book you engage in an act of self-transcendence. With a taste for reading you are placed in the best society in every period of history - with the wisest, the wittiest - the tenderest, the bravest, the purest who have ever adorned humanity. The world is created for you.

Whether you're young or old, rich or poor, rural or urban, experimental or traditional, to give language to perceptions and experience is always empowering and liberating.

Katherine Mansfield says, "The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books." Book love will make your hours pleasant as long as you live.

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul.

In many ways, you are what you read!