In the midst of one of those weeks in which far too many meetings interrupt the real business of life, and even work, it's very comforting to pause for a moment, look up my desk, and see the towers of books gathered around. The piles: review copies and proofs/manuscripts sent by publishers; new books I couldn't resist after reading a review, and doesn't Amazon's Prime make it very hard not to buy; a pile already read to think about/take notes on; a growing tower relevant to the book on public value I'm co-authoring for the BBC Trust, with some notes on publishing on demand which is the route we might go with that one; and the new tower of books I'm gathering for research on my own new book if only the anonymous referees give it the thumbs up. It does remind me of a line I once read that said books were the dominant species on the planet, as every library seeds multiple new libraries. Ah well, on with the meetings.