The Truth About Books and Boys

one

And here we have CHAPTER ONE! Yay! I'm going to try and update every Friday if I can. I know this chapter is a little bit slow, but I promise that it picks up. I hope y'all like this. It would be awesome if you could leave a comment, telling me what you think. Thanks xx. 

one

My eyes roamed over the endless spines of aged books mixed with ones that had yet to ever be discovered. One of my favorite parts about this bookstore—“The Bookstore,” as it was creatively titled—was that it mixed the old and the new. People brought in countless books that they had read hundreds of times, allowing others to discover the magic within the weathered pages. The Bookstore also ordered an assortment of modern entities and was pretty good at keeping up to date with whatever literary trend the world was experiencing. One could easily find a classic Jane Austen and then turn around to another shelf and find the latest theory of futuristic life forms. I was more of an Austen girl myself, but I had perused a few sci-fi novels in my time, just for the heck of it.

Currently, I was in search of something to read. I didn’t know what I was in the mood for, but I knew that only a book could cure my desire. In English we were going through a poetry unit right now, which was just dreadful, because poetry happened to be rather dreadful. I had never really understood the appeal of crafting pretty fragments rather than complete entireties. Novels made more sense to me than poems did. I respected poets enormously, for they were merely expressing themselves, but that didn’t mean that I had to read or love their works. I preferred basic prose.

As I continued to scan over the many titles printed across the backbones of books, I came across a black one. I had always been drawn to black books. Though the notorious idiom stated that you weren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, I still did, in a way. I judged books by their colors. Black was a severe color, leading me to the conclusion that if a book possessed a black jacket or coating, chances were that it was serious. That wasn’t always the case as I had learned from my reading of black books, but more often than not, my assumption was correct. So because I happened to be in a bit of staid mood, I pulled out this particular black book and read the back.

It was about a doctor from the early 1900s. Every patient he had died. It wasn’t his fault, though, because they were all in critical condition, and in the twentieth century, some medicines had yet to been invented.

“That’s a terrible book,” someone said from behind me.

Clutching the black paperback in my hand tightly, I spun around to face a boy. “Why?”

“Well,” he glanced down at the ground, avoiding eye contact, “do you mind if I ruin the ending for you?”

“I’d rather you not,” I admitted softly. I liked coming to my own conclusions about books—even if unfamiliar boys with curly hair and wide-brimmed glasses disliked them.

“Okay, but I’m just letting you know now, you’re not going to like it,” he said, continuing to gaze at the scuffed up hardwood floor.

“How do you know?” Most of the time I wasn’t one for oppositions or chats with strangers, but this kid looked harmless, so I was okay breaking one of my personal norms.

He shrugged and momentarily allowed his eyes to dart up and look at me. “It’s just a terrible book.”

“What makes it so terrible?”

“The writing is bad—it’s just a ton of useless sentences—and the plot just gets increasingly depressing as it progresses. It’s terrible.” He stood by his first claim, and I respected that. Personally, I possessed many strong opinions about the books that I read—if this random guy thought that this book was terrible, then maybe it was. Though, I would still have to read it for myself to verify his negative review.