Dear “reader,”
Did I hear you appropriately? Did you simply inform your good friend you “completed” me?
Let’s get one thing straight: simply because I’m an essay assortment doesn’t imply you get to neglect a 3rd of my chapters and depend me towards your summer season Goodreads purpose. Even if you happen to’re 5 books delayed, you’re not allowed to skim by way of sections of me you’ve deemed uninteresting from the essay’s title after which hand me off to a good friend, saying, “I believe you’d actually like this.”
This may sound loopy, however you must really learn EVERY phrase of me if you wish to inform others you’ve “learn me.” And facet notice—if you’re solely studying me so you’ll be able to log me as “full” and inform others you completed a e-book, that’s a complete different downside altogether.
I’ve sat idly by, watching you misinform your mates, for a lot too lengthy. However at this time on the café was the ultimate straw. After recommending me to your good friend, she requested the golden query: “What’s it about?” I assumed the jig was up proper then and there. However no. Since you managed to a minimum of learn the titular essay (I by no means ought to have put it at the beginning of the e-book), you fooled everybody round you. Nobody batted an eye fixed. Aside from me. I did.
I’m extra than simply my titular essay, I’ll have you already know. Each a part of me, each part—sure, even the seemingly out-of-place essay about my creator’s observations on the Hoover Dam—makes me who I’m. You can not simply learn the primary couple of essays, assume to your self, “I get the gist,” after which go on auto-pilot till you attain the final 20 or so pages and begin studying intently once more.
Right here’s an out-there thought: possibly if you happen to learn me from cowl to cowl, that seemingly out-of-place essay wouldn’t really feel so misplaced in any case. Possibly—dare I say—it’s there for a cause? Or, what if every essay begins to make extra sense when understood within the context of the remainder of the e-book—or possibly even simply the previous pages you left out as a result of there have been too few paragraph breaks and never sufficient phrases leaping off the web page like “Intercourse” or “Right here’s the place I buried the treasure.”
Additionally, have been these annotations crucial? Given that you just left out half of my pages, I extremely doubt you’ll ever open me up once more to revisit what you wrote within the margins. This leads me to just one conclusion: you underlined passages at random, additional making an attempt to trick the subsequent “reader” you cross me off to that you just really learn the e-book. This isn’t going to work. Need to know why? As a result of the passage you scribbled an asterisk subsequent to, labeling “Faustian,” had completely nothing to do with Johann Faust. It was about Georgia O’Keeffe—therefore the chapter’s title, “Georgia O’Keeffe.”
You’re higher than this. You already know it, I do know it, and that self-help e-book you claimed to learn final month is aware of it too. Let this be a lesson: that pang of guilt you felt each time you flipped by way of a number of of my pages with out studying them, nicely, it was warranted.
Regards from Honolulu & the Resort Tequendama in Bogotá, Columbia,
The White Album by Joan Didion
P.S. That’s a reference you’ll solely decide up on had you really “learn” me.
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