Keith Ferrell, Author, Speaker, Friend

Thursday morning, the meeting room at the Moneta Library filled to capacity for the Friends of the Library's annual meeting. They came to hear Keith Ferrell speak about The Death of Reading, a topic he is passionate about.

Keith, former Editor-in-Chief of OMNI Magazine in New York, is the author of more than a dozen published books and more scientific articles than anyone could count. Most of his books are scholarly biographies for youngsters of figures such as Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, John Steinbeck. He is presently at work on a novel, writing day and night away, and reading constantly as well.

Turning OMNI into an online magazine was one of his challenges; I suspect he has mixed emotions about that, since he views the Internet as a major culprit in enticing today's adolescents away from the simple pleasures of the written word on paper, in a book. Speaking before the Friends group was, of course, preaching to the choir. Everyone in that room was first and foremost a reader. Personally, I still recall the day I was finally old enough to have my own library card, to choose my own books, to take home a stack of books I could hardly carry. (This was before the day when libraries had children's rooms, so the entire library was mine to plunder, with the exception of one room of fragile books that ostensibly could disintegrate if a child breathed on the pages.)

Serving on the Franklin County Library's Bookfest committee with Keith for the last three years, I've gotten to know and appreciate the amazing amount of knowledge he has about the current state of publishing. He and his wife Martha located to Glade Hill from New York but he keeps up with world-wide trends and worries that we're reaching a tipping point in the very near future. Yes, I said Glade Hill. In Franklin County. Hmmm, maybe there is something he hasn't yet told us...