For a book to change us, to cleanse us, it must get deep inside, and those pink books, as I've told them hundreds of times, stay on the surface. They reach only the outer layers of the skin, our thoughts and memories. They smooth over worries with illusory balm, like the anti-wrinkle creams my friends spread on their faces. All those creams do is make the skin swell up, attacking and irritating it, a lie that they mistake for alleviation. It's just a temporary inflammation hiding the wrinkles. Puffy, that's what my friends are.
I've got lots of wrinkles around my eyes and mouth, from reading and laughing, and for me those wrinkles are the traces of my life, my fun. I'm alive and I read real books. Not dead books that simple submit to being read.
I'm alive, and I read, but I'm not the only one who reads those books, as I used to believe so proudly.