A gift has its hidden meaning. And not so hidden. Books are especially dangerous. Also some plants. Let's not talk about the animals. What does that friend who gives you a ficus or a hot water fish think of you? What is the family member who gives you a robot vacuum cleaner trying to tell you? The person who brings you a hat, who does he think you are? But we went to the books. A relative, coincidentally, gives us each a book every year. Every Christmas he fulfills his ritual of spending a morning in a small bookstore, choosing copies according to our varied personalities. He certainly has a great time browsing through the shelves. And above all, as he says, describing his daughters, grandchildren, ex-wife and partner of his ex-wife, so that his bookseller friend can help him in the choice. He will have a laugh commenting on our lives, characters and who knows what intimacies, until he finds that book that will fit us like a glove. In the book he gives you, you can see what you suggest.
Let no one think that when we open the packages we do not appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts. Sometimes the novel you dreamed of appears in your hands without knowing it. Others, just the book that you would read the least at this moment in your life, if not ever. Let no one doubt that we equally appreciate the affection and dedication of this family member and his bookseller. From the bookseller at least, who is the one who knew the book that you just dropped.
This one, for example, which is titled, say, The Bone of Pain or The Hole of the Wound (imitations of a real title that I do not reveal; an author is not to blame for falling into the wrong reader) and that, opening it at random , it smells like encrypted poetic masochism, sorry. On the cover, a kind of plastic doll, very small, on its back, attached to a large yellowish wall (perhaps with moisture) that it could be sucking, seems to be writhing in pain. If she is still alive, maybe not, although who knows.
Hello, I want to exchange the book you chose for me for one that you would never give to someone who likes that one, I would say to the bookseller, looking him straight in the eyes. But I also wonder what I have done on my part, this year, to give the sensation, even deferred, of being someone who reads just the opposite of what he wants to read. We are nobody.
