My father was a librarian, an archivist, and a rare books collector. I grew up surrounded by books which were a hundred years older than I was nestled beside stacks of long-defunct short-lived Irish literary magazines, many of which were never digitized. My father would open his latest find to the copyright page, explaining why this particular object had value (not of the fiscal variety). The book was a link in a chain, a talisman of a continuum. Within the crush of shelved books he always knew where to find the one he wanted. In the middle of a discussion he would slowly get up, walk to a shelf, pull out a book, and read the relevant passage.