Feeling a book is intimately for you
Each book you read becomes an acquaintance. Some you look forward to seeing again, some you hide around a corner from. There are one-way friendships in which you put in all the work, and half-strangers with whom you never get beyond nodding terms – enigmatic stories that are difficult to judge. Many become frequent visitors, resting in rooms you own and occasionally being entertaining or upsetting. Then, perhaps only once a year or less, a book becomes an intimate friend.
This goes beyond simple adoration. That is certainly felt, but standing on its shoulders is a heightened level of immersion in the story. With these paragon works, you do not merely admire at arm’s length: you wish to jump inside its pages. Every leaf is tickled with a detail or notion or general way of being that makes you think this was written for me.
This sensation can bloom when a book seems familiar, as though you are its preordained recipient. Topics, references, locations, and humour do not get under your skin, because they are already there. Here is the very embodiment of something you presently feel. A novel’s characters are people, or versions of them, you have met. Each paragraph elicits empathy, each chapter ends with a knowing sigh.
Or sometimes a book can ambush you. The story may dance around remote lives and times that can never be known, but it whispers intently in your direction. It feels as though only you can truly hear its voice. As the working day forges onwards you and this title are in another dimension, awaiting the moment when you can be alone together. It is as if this book has been sent to you from some cosmic Neverland that exists to marry page and person.
Halfway through the book, it becomes inconceivable to consider that it could possibly have been written for anyone else. So tight is its grip that all reason evaporates. There may as well be a dedication to you at the start. No one can know or love this story quite so ferociously.