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Jul 23, 2007

"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains,but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts." --Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Barber Who Loved Books

Fueled by a lifelong love of literature -- which began as a child when he sneaked a pre-dawn peek at his neighbor's newspaper –- Rueben Martinez decided it would be his mission to raise the literacy rate among Hispanics. He got the idea to open a bookstore inside his barbershop in 1993, after customers repeatedly borrowed his collection of 200 books. The store took on a life of its own, expanding to its present site in 1999 and adding a second in 2001. When he's not at the shop, Martinez addresses booksellers and students countrywide, also appearing on a weekly television program on Spanish channel Univision, a powerful pulpit he uses to promote the empowering freedom of reading. "I feel like I'm doing what I love with my life," says Martinez, who recently received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant."