Ciabattari is a master of transformation as she gives these stories of loss, woe, crisis and collapse the salutary and sometimes bracing pleasures of plain good fiction."--Kirkus Reviews

كان صديقي عادل ينتظرنا واصطحبنا إلى شجرة الغاف التي اتفقت معه أن يرينا إياها مسبقا، فتح عمر فاهه من الدهشة وتحركت يده تلقائيا لالتقاط الصور، قال بحماس وبصوت عال: "كم عمر هذه الشجرة بالضبط؟!"
أجاب عادل: "أربعون عاما، إنها مازالت في أوج عطائها.."
عمر: "في أوج عطائها؟! إنها عجوز.."
عادل: "بل مازالت في أوج عطائها، إن أشجار الغاف تستطيع أن تعيش لمئة عام، لقد زرعها والدي بقصد أن ينتفع بها جيلين أو ثلاثةعلى الأقل

(in response to the question: what do you think of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle?)

Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.

Why is it that if you say you don’t enjoy using an e-reader, or that you aren’t going to get one till the technology is mature, you get reported as “loathing” it?

The little Time article itself is fairly accurate about what I’ve said about e-reading, but the title of the series, “Famous Writers Who Loathe E-Books,” reflects or caters to a silly idea: that not being interested in using a particular technology is the same as hating and despising it.

It is, incidentally, a favour that e-books have done for the Good Bookshop: they have made books beautiful again. A few years ago, book covers could be rather drab affairs: the title and the author's name printed over a stock photograph of something Vaguely Relevant. If you wanted to read it, you had to take it as it was. Whereas now, in these new and glorious days when the margins on physical are that little bit higher than on the electrical alternative, publishers produce exquisite bindings. Bookshops haven't been this pretty for at least a century.

We will speak for the books."
...
"Like the Lorax?"
"The Lorax speaks for the trees," I remind her.
"Books are made out of paper. Paper is made out of trees."
"What about e-books?"
"We can speak for them too."
"Audiobooks?"
"Audiobooks speak for themselves." She grins. "Get it?