I realized it before I even finished the book.

I’ve been reading James by Percival Everett, and I’m about two thirds through.

It’s as good as anything I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot. I was an English major. It’s better than most, the book, but the major too.

I paused to maybe eat something because I’m starting to feel hungry, and I noticed several things at once.

One is that the book has got to me. It’s inside my head and is affecting my thinking. And the way I’m talking now, even the way I’m writing, as I can tell by looking at what I’m writing just now.

Another thing I notice is that I realize that I like the author so much I want to be his friend and him to be mine.

I want to invite him to lunch, and we can eat and talk together like friends and I can listen.

I do have friends already but I’m not very good at it. I need more friends and I know it and I’m trying. I’m shy in person and clumsy around people because I decided long ago that I grew up awkward and too much alone because I realize I was poor, as I have been all my life.

But I like people, love them really, and at the moment I don’t know how I ever taught school because I never felt qualified to be in charge of anything.

I didn’t quite get over that inadequate feeling but I suppressed it, but now I’m thinking while I’m at it that there are more things to realize and I am.

Realistically, I know that if I can’t have lunch with Percival Everett in person, at least I can read some more of his other books. That’s almost as good as knowing him, because with every book I know I’ll know him more.

And then of course I realize even more, that that’s what reading is and does, and I’ve known that for a very long time, and I have a lot of friends by reading them, and I can pick and choose and do.

And the worlds I live in mix and blur, and the real tactable people I can actually have lunch with we can sit and talk about the world we share and the friends from the books we’ve read.

And this book now is doing things to me, and I’m not even finished.

And it’s making me better than I was because there’s more of me.

Reading gets me to know things I didn’t know but now I’m glad I do.

But also things I didn’t want to know and now I have to deal with the knowing.

And even if I try to choose what I read, my experience tells me that I can’t control everything, that I can be continually surprised, sometimes against my will, and it’s life, take it as it comes, step by step, and make the best of it, which I am, and I’m glad I can and it works well enough better than the alternative.

Reading gives me great comfort, as it can for everybody.

So I’ll stop all this thinking for now, because I need to go to the bathroom and then maybe eat some replacements.

And I’m writing this down now because I want to share it and become one of your book friends as I imagine you to be mine.