If daydreaming slips so frequently from meditation into Mittytation, aren't we much better off reading books? That's a comforting thought for those of us who love reading. I'm a literature professor. Reading for me is both vocation and avocation. What better way to improve my time, I flatter myself. But occasionally while reading I get the uneasy feeling that if I looked in the mirror I would see a child sucking on a binky. And each time I teach Emerson's "The American Scholar" I am stung by words like these: "Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings."