Like If You’re Feeling Sinister, the Belle & Sebastian album that played behind my sophomore year of college, Freedom brings back a very specific, if not too distant, time.

It’s not the details of my life I remember, but the feeling that there was a writer on the cover of Time Magazine. Everywhere I went, people were talking about a book. That New Years, I went to a party with a lot graduates from Connecticut colleges. Before we got there, I bet my date that everyone he would meet will have read Freedom. I won. As someone who is in favor of reading, I was favor of this.

Tonight, I’m seeing Jonathan Franzen speak in Denver. And the thing about hearing an author speak—it’s not like a show or an opening or a game. People aren’t dragged to readings. No, the people who go to hear an author speak are excited to hear an author to speak. I’m excited to hear Jonathan Franzen speak tonight, and I’m excited to be in a roomful of people who agree.