The other day I shoved off early for an MRI appointment. My doctor, having already examined every other part of my body, ordered the MRI to see if I have a soul.

I expected to have a wait before my trip through the freezing, loud tunnel so I brought a book along to pass the time. While climbing into my car, a walker, one of those strangers who occasionally choses my cul de sac for his morning exercise, shouted to me in astonishment, “You still read books?!”

I literally didn’t know what to say.

As I drove to Valley Presbyterian, I tried to unravel the stranger’s strange question. Was he surprised I still read printed books in our digital age? Or was he surprised that I read any kind of book?

This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered someone who was shocked to learn I still read books. One of my closest friends, I’ll call him “Marc Germain” because that’s his name, hasn’t read anything longer than a menu in 30 years. Somehow, he manages to stumble through life just fine, proving it is possible to live and be functional in society without ever cracking the spine of a novel, biography or a thousand-page history tome.

He finds my obsessive-compulsive reading as incomprehensible as I find his web-surfing information-gathering. The great divide in society is not just left and right, it’s book readers versus non-book readers.

Based on data from 2011 to 2019, according to the German market and consumer data analysis company Statista, 72% of Americans read at last one book in the last year. That number is down a bit from 79% in 2011. Still, books are doing just fine, helped by the pandemic and all that extra time we’ve got on our hands after the lives we knew cratered.

I bought over 50 books this year. Some I purchased to support friends who had written them, others for my own professional or personal interest and a few were bought as gifts for others. And we have a grandchild, so that explains at least a dozen titles, all of which have the word “Pookie” in them.

I try to read everything I buy. Some take longer than others. I’m still working on James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which I bought 35 years ago. Highlights from this year’s stash include “Crazy Sorrow” by Vince Passaro, “Travels with George” by Nathaniel Philbrick, “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr, “Tulsa 1921” by Randal Krenbier, “Educated” by Tara Westover, “We Are the Brennans” by Tracey Lange, “1848: Year of Revolution” by Mike Rapport, “A New World Begins” by Jeremy D. Popkin, “Metternich” by Wolfram Sieman and “Wayward Heroes” by Halldor Laxness (the Philip Roughton translation).

All these books have been a great source of pleasure but are now a source of concern. I’ve run out of space.

The lucky ones lie neatly side-by-side on the shelves in the library, bedroom and my office. Others are piled up randomly wherever they land. It’s a problem.

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I could give some away. I have even been known to do that, mostly purging political books that I have come to view as poison regardless of which side they’re attacking. Still, saying goodbye to a book is harder for me than saying goodbye to a child. Books don’t wreck your car.

Someday, I hope that book-shocked walker appears again on my block so I can ask him for a clarification. I’m genuinely baffled by people who don’t read books. What do you people do to fill your days? I know how Marc Germain fritters away his time and wouldn’t wish that on an enemy. Then again, he believes I’m just another dinosaur plodding into the tar pits of extinction.

Hey, have you ever read,“The Great Extinctions” by Norman McLeod? I have it around here somewhere.

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays. He can be reached at: [email protected].