And then imagine that same record you just discovered has a scratch on it, the stamp is slightly torn, or the paint on the furniture has been chipped, and suddenly it is not the item you have thought it was. You might love everything else about it, the look, the design, the feel... but it will never be the same.
That is my relationship with books. Maybe that sounds strange, to think one could have a relationship with an inanimate object, but a book that is yet to have its cover opened has so much undiscovered potential. No two readers can read a book in exactly the same way because everyone's minds are different. We have all had different experiences. A book will mean something to you that it can never mean to someone else.
So, imagine you have found a book and you love the voice of the character. You love that you can see her face. You cheer for her success and cringe at the painful reality of her world, and yet you are grateful for what you learn from it. After all this, after all the time you have invested in it, you discover a flaw. Not a technical flaw, such as the writing being inadequate, but a flaw that lessens the value of the story because it broke your trust. The book is suddenly not what you thought it would be, and the experience is frustrating and disheartening because you know you can never look at it with the same pair of eyes ever again.
I hate when I experience this... as I just have. I want to ask the author why they had to include that, just that one little part. Why couldn't they have written the story without that? Don't they see how much I want to love their story, but now I can't?
Reading, like buying collector's items, can be a big leap of faith. It's not always worth the risk. But when you do happen to find just one perfect item, isn't it worth that much more? Doesn't it make you want to keep looking?
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