I am passing the time working through an old WIP that stilted at 15k, but which I keep coming back to. Its a couple of years since I worked on it, and I have got to a section in which a bookshop owner, who may or may not in actuality be a wizard, and has not really been introduced into the story yet so this is generally in flux, is contemplating the bookshelves… I have absolutely no idea if this passage will survive should I ever write the whole of this novel. It was however joyous to rediscover this bit of fanciful nonsense, because I can not remember writing it (this happens more often than you might think…)

This is somewhat rough and ready as its part of an incomplete first draft…

A Question of books

Books, he had determined years ago, develop personalities if left unread for too long. They gather a sense of self in much the same way they gather dust, sunlight turns pages yellow and slowly bleaches cover if left exposed. The cosmetic changes were, admittedly, more obvious but the personalities books developed were more subtle and harder to define. Nevertheless, he remained convinced this was the case.

Autobiographies, for one thing, tended to develop a high opinion of their own importance, while Biographies tend towards servility. Romance novels wilt as time passes, losing their passion to be read. Histories on the other hand become stuffier as they gather dust and assume a greater veracity upon themselves in direct corelation to how out of touch they become. Novels, meanwhile, have a habit of becoming steadily more fanciful and acquiring unrealistic aspirations.

The variation in personality was never more pronounced that between the fiction and non-fiction shelves, which tended to leer at each other. One considering the other to be lacking in true worth. The others considered there opposite numbers knew the measure of everything but lacked the imagination to raise the human spirit.

He considered both sides to be equally wrong on all counts.  

One thing he had noted was that all books, with the possible exception of wilting romances, have in common a desire to be read, with the singular other exception being books of magic.

Books of magic, perhaps as a by-product of their nature, are secretive. They hide away their words in jealous guardianship. They do everything they can to dissuade the causal browser from opening them and perusing their pages. He had witnessed them actively shrink into the recesses of the bookshelves and gather motes of dust upon themselves like a protective shroud. The last thing a book of magic wanted was to be read, for with the act of reading the magic within them was released.

Romances on the other hand just did not know when to let go.

‘If you are looking for the spell books, look for the books trying hardest to be inconspicuous’ he would tell you, if you were to ask. If he was inclined to impart such knowledge at least, which as a rule he was not.

In truth he as happiest if he spent the day in the bookshop, saw no one, and no one came in asking him to impart knowledge.

A good day was a day spent with a pot of tea under the cosy, a plate of fondant fancies beside the tea pot, lounging in a comfy chair, while perusing a random book from his stock. Particularly, if he was of a mind, reading a certain kind of fantasy novel. The kind that often featured him.

He loved reading the bits they got wrong.