There is nothing like the smell of a book, nothing like the feel of the rough edges as you turn the pages, nothing like the bittersweet satisfaction of finishing an incredible story. By the time I was seven, I read anything I could get my hands on-mystery crime novels, cliché high school romances, even presidents’ biographies. I vividly recall the day I stumbled upon my mom’s old medical books, flipping through pages of jargon beyond my comprehension, but stopping to examine the detailed descriptions of human anatomy. One particular picture still haunts my memory: a human lung affected by tobacco smoke. To this day, I have never been tempted to pick up a cigarette, still recalling the image of a blackened lung. That afternoon, I bombarded
