A gift has its hidden meaning. And not so hidden. Books are especially dangerous. Also some plants. We're not talking about the little animals. What does that friend who gives you a ficus tree or a hot water fish think of you? What is the relative who gave you a robot vacuum cleaner trying to tell you? The person wearing your cap, who does he think you are? But we were talking about books. A relative, coincidentally, gives each of us a book every year. Every Christmas we fulfill the ritual of spending a morning in a small bookstore, choosing copies according to our varied personalities. He certainly enjoys rummaging through the shelves. And above all, as he himself explains, describing us to the daughters, grandchildren, ex-wife and partner of the ex-wife, so that his bookseller friend helps him in the choice. He will laugh commenting on our lives, characters and get to know which intimacies, until we find that book that will fit us like a glove. In the book he gives you, you can see what you suggest.
Don't let anyone think that when we open the packages we don't appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts. Sometimes the novel you dreamed of without knowing it appears in your hands. Others, just the book you would least read at this point in your life, to say never. Let no one doubt that we are equally grateful for the love and dedication of this family member and his bookseller. At least the bookseller, who knew the book you just dropped.
The one, for example, which is titled, let's say, L'os del dolor or L'forat de la ferida (imitations of a real title that I won't reveal; an author is not to blame for falling for the wrong reader) and that , opening it at random, smells of encrypted poetic masochism, sorry. On the cover, a kind of plastic doll, very small, on its back, stuck to a large yellowish wall (perhaps with moisture) that could be licking, seems to be writhing in pain. If she is still alive, which maybe not, but come and find out.
Hi, I want to trade the book you picked out for me for one that you would never give to someone who likes this one, I would say to the bookseller, looking him straight in the eye. But I also wonder what I must have done on my part, this year, to make the feeling, still deferred, of being someone who reads just the opposite of what he wants to read. We are nobody.
