A Charmed Life

Barbara Brotman at the Chicago Tribune wrote a profile of her neighbors Charles and Sue Wells, described by Brotman as “marathon readers”:

Hours pass, the sun's position shifts, I do the grocery shopping and two loads of laundry—and there they still are, sitting in the same chairs next to each other on their patio, in complete silence and utter absorption. They have not moved except to turn pages.

Charles explains how the Wells fit in so much reading: "You have to make a commitment to it. … You have to make a decision: Are you going to have clean countertops, or read? We've made that choice. I want to read and understand the world better."

That sounds like a good trade to me.