Mary Schmich captures something truer than the familiar notion that books expand your mind: she's describing reading as an economics of experience. You needn't have a passport, savings account, or even leave your armchair to inhabit Renaissance Florence, a whaling ship, or the interior monologue of someone utterly unlike yourself. A teenager in rural Nebraska can live as a Victorian governess or a jazz musician in 1920s Harlem for the price of a library card. The word "discount" is the genius here—it suggests reading doesn't merely approximate travel, but offers the same cognitive and emotional arrival at a fraction of the cost and risk.