A good book, he concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul. Such books were for him rare and, as he aged, rarer. Still he searched, one more Ithaca for which he was forever bound. […] He believed books had an aura that protected him, that without one beside him he would die. He happily slept without women. He never slept without a book.