I do not collect the bits of knowledge I have in a ball to place on the rim of my hat for the world to look at it and admire. I do not consider myself an intellect, but I can keep up with your conversation. I've lost the haughty wholesomeness of my youth. I do not profess to be any sort of great reader. I know the classics, and I suffered through Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, the imagery often bringing the burn of bile to the back of my throat. I no longer read things that I think I should read, things that I hope people will witness me reading. I no longer read to impress. I read for me.

I love bookstores, LOVE THEM. I have ever since I stopped finding my next read on a bestsellers list or sample syllabus. I no longer know if an author is known or unknown, if they've won praise or scorn...I find everything I label "worthwhile" in the opening pages and in my reaction to the flow of words and the canvas they color. It was with this mind that I picked up Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale some months ago. It lie haphazardly on a crumbling mountain of misplaced books as the holiday shopping season revealed its base barbarity.

Tired and chilled, I loitered for awhile in the lower level of Borders while Nick sought to find a book for his father. Eventually, knowing how it was when Nick wanted to browse, I walked over to the sad heap on the table, disappointed that people should be so rude, so lazy. I let my fingers glide over the embossed dust jackets on the hardback novels when one in particular caught my eye. I read the first several pages right there in the middle of the crowded floor, people barging through linked hands and intimate closeness to beeline toward their section. (I'm not a fan of holiday shoppers, if you haven't picked up on that yet.)

I'm not a fan of crowds in general, really. Maybe it's my height or small voice, or maybe it is a remnant of a movie theater rush I had the misfortune of enduring, and I thought the surround of tall people were going to smother me. I couldn't see anything but shirted backs, my air was stale and I was afraid. I tend to skirt the outside of groups and do my very best to melt into the wall. Not that day though, no. I was engrossed. I bought the book and beneath the coffee table it sat for a pitifully long spell while I forgot its very existence. Until last week.



And then the hunger was there again, the desire to consume all of it at once and then over and over again until you are replete with it. It is a story within a story, and several stories within that story, and if you like stories, chances are you'll like this story...because it has lots of stories. Story. (Felt I needed that last one for good measure.)

I cannot remember ever a time when I have been so hard on a book. The binding is gruesome and the jacket torn at the folds...it is telling of my appetency. I devoured it. Everybody has a story, everybody...and they thrive under the guise of the ordinary and the mundane. In a fashion we all don to one degree or another, the protagonist tells fanciful tales to avoid her own story. We live lives one way to lie to ourselves, or to have people believe in our façade, the "us" we've built. We do it to protect this vulnerable strand of truth that lie tender and unsullied by the opinions of others. Why do we hide?

We need to keep something for ourselves, something that nobody else knows...it's how we define ourselves and how we communicate with the voice in our head that rouses us to speak in the middle of the night...but choose wisely. Don't let it be your undoing. Don't let it haunt you. It's good to free the hurt, voice the pain. You prove nothing in hardening and everything in remaining soft throughout the journey.

My airy thoughts aside, this is a worthwhile read. Engaging, dark, intriguing, and a tale sewn from a strewn reality.