On his way to the restroom, he had taken a peek into a small door-less library of glassed-in bookshelves.  The host's hand on the small of his back had then guided him in and flicked on a light switch, and the host then said, Let me show you.  The host slid open the glass door to a shelf and pulled out a luxuriously-bound book.  The host told the story of how he had come to learn of it, of the circumstances around its publishing, of its eminence in its field of study, of the author's life and fate, and did then the same with the next book and the next one.  He said it took some doing to find books that had managed to sustain or grow their standing over decades in the various genres and micro-genres of the writing arts.  At one point, he stopped himself to acknowledge that he was indeed a connoisseur, and that he valued these books more than any one who had actually read them.  The host had then flipped off the light and guided him back out towards the bathroom.  When, while washing his hands, he looked up into the mirror upon his slightly disheveled visage, he wondered if it had been the host's way to make him see that not all value resides between the covers.