The Reader

If you're reading this, then maybe you know you ought to read everything. And maybe you know you ought to read deeply. Because there's witchery in these words and spellwork in the spine.

Once there was, and one day there will be. This is the beginning of every story. “Once

This is a book, and a book is a world, and words are the seeds in which meanings are curled. Pages of oceans and margins of land are civilizations you hold in the palm of your hand. But look at your world and your life seems to shrink to cities of paper and seas made of ink. Do you know who you are, or have you been misled? Are you the reader, or are you the read?

But books are curious objects. They have the power to trap, transport, and even transform you if you are lucky. But in the end, books—even magic ones—are only objects pieced together from paper and glue and thread. That was the fundamental truth the readers forgot. How vulnerable the book really was. To fire. To the damp. To the passage of time. And to theft.

But books are curious objects. They have the power to trap, transport, and even transform you if you are lucky.

Home’s what you make it.” Nin shrugged. “Could be a ship. Could be what you carry around on your back day after day. Could be family. Or maybe just one person you love more than any other. That’s home.” The

Were they all just stories whose endings had already been written, the dates of their deaths pinned to the page with periods?

...clutching the Book to his chest, under his crossed arms, as if trying to press it into his ribs, until his lungs filled with letters and his heart became a pulsing paragraph.

You got a choice, Sef. Control your future, or let your future control you.” Above,

Sometimes you find things and you wish you hadn’t,” he said softly. “Sometimes you wish they’d stayed lost.” •

But being smart was overrated. Being stupid and brave and curious? Now that’s something stories are made of. Dimarion’s

If you didn't like your own life, you changed it. You ran away. You did something spectacular. you didn't steal someone else's story and pretend it was yours.

If anything could be a book, there was no telling what you could learn, if you knew what to look for. Smooth river stones spelled out across a mossy floor. Lines drawn in the sand. Or inscribed on the side of a fallen log, half-obscured by twigs and mulch: This is a book.

It was the most terrible sound in a world of terrible sounds, the kind of sound that haunts you in the late hours of the night when the darkness shutters you in and the cold creeps into you through the cracks. When you are suddenly gripped by the unwavering certainty that you are already dead--and gone forever.

In a world where the only evidence of your existence was a body subject to decay and the works you left behind when the body was gone, you tried all manner of things to convince yourself that your life had some meaning, some permanence.

It wouldn't give me more time here, but if I was part of something like that, maybe my life wouldn't be so small. Maybe I could make a difference before my time ran out. Maybe I'd matter.

Captain Reed eyed him thoughtfully. "I built my whole life around the stories they about me. You know what I learned?" Archer shook his head. "What you do makes you who you are....

It was years ago now, on a warm summer night, When the boy came out of the sea. His skin was blue and his hair was white, And he was in love with me. He was wild and true, and right then I knew That he was in love with me. In our ship we sailed for years on the ocean, Unfettered and totally free. And he gave all his days to his endless devotion, For he was in love with me. I called it a phase and made endless delays, Though he was in love with me. One day the waves swept him right off the ship And dropped him into the blue. As his skin turned to water, his hair into fish, He asked if I loved him too. Too late I called through the wind and the water, 'I was always in love with you.' I was always in love with you.

Some people said there was a secret society trained precisely for that purpose, toiling away generation after generation, poring over the book and copying it down, harvesting knowledge like sheaves of wheat, as if they could survive on sentences and supple paragraphs alone. For years they hoarded the words and the magic, growing stronger on it every day. But books are curious objects. They have the power to trap, transport, and even transform you if you are lucky. But in the end, books—even magic ones—are only objects pieced together from paper and glue and thread. That was the fundamental truth the readers forgot. How vulnerable the book really was.

Why in all the blue world would you sit here makin’ up stories when you could be out there makin’ stories?

Una pistola negra. Un colorido diente de león en la cubierta. Y una explosión que astillaba las tablas del barco. Y oscuridad. Por unos momentos luchó como si pudiera apagar la visión con sus manos, agitando con las piernas, pero de repente le embargo una repentina e intensa paz. Se extendió por su interior al igual que la sangre avanza a través de la tela, saturando cada una de sus fibras. Iba a morir, de acuerdo, pero ése no sería el día. Y fue entonces cuando decidió que llevaría su barco al último confín occidental del mundo. Porque aún había miles de aventuras por vivir, y apenas un numero finito de días para hacerlo. Porque el mundo lo esperaba allí fuera. ¿Y porqué no? Con ese último pensamiento, sonrió y cerró los ojos, dejó que el agua se lo llevara.

One was clutching the Book to his chest, under his crossed arms, as if trying to press it into his ribs, until his lungs filled with letters and his heart became a pulsing paragraph. The

—Es —leyó, sin deletrear— Un. Libro. Esto es un libro —miró hacía arriba impaciente—. Eso no es un libro. Es un pizarrón. —¿Es lo que crees? Lon abrió la boca para replicar, pero la cerró de nuevo al momento. Ladeó la cabeza, desconcertado. ¿Podía un pizarrón ser un libro? ¿Acaso cualquier cosa podía ser un libro, siempre y cuando uno supiera leerla?

She made each suture perfectly—one neat stitch after another—until they were lined up across Archer’s wounds like sharp black letters, as if every set of stitches was a healing word Doc had written to keep his skin together. There

In Kelanna, when they mourn, they tell stories—as if the stories will keep you close to them. Believing that if they tell them often enough, for long enough, you won’t be forgotten. Hoping that the stories will keep you alive—if only in memory. But

Perchè diavolo vi sedete qui a inventarvi storie quando potreste essere lì fuori a crearle, queste storie?