They have faces, of course — covers for what is inside. Often the cover belies the interior, just as the bright alluring faces of people often hide the seething and confusing stories beneath them.
And they have spines of various strengths and tensile pliability like we do. Spines that sag and crack and creak, spines that are wonderfully strong and flexible for a few decades and then invisibly deteriorate and lose their glue. They have arms too, so to speak — a book opened wide very like arms flung open. And their back covers, so dense with explanation and blurb, look very like the hirsute backs of heads;.
Like people, no book is exactly symmetrical, the printing of pages leaving the edges just slightly awry, as we are always, despite all preparation and presentation — one shoe tied loosely, the beard unevenly trimmed, one eye larger than the other, the spectacles askew, all the bills paid but the one that arrives with a snarl.
Some books are as small as a hand, some as fat as a head, some broad as a beam, some very nearly the size of a coffee-table. Some are faint as a whisper, some old and brittle, their skins leathery, their stitching unraveling. Some are so fragile that a good sneeze would reduce them to dust, yet the ancient fragile ones are so often the ones with the most dignity and the most remarkable stories inside — just like people.
Some blandly bound but roaring inside, some brightly bound but insipid, some missing pages, some amputated, some excoriated, some burned in piles, the ideas inside too incendiary for the authority of the moment. Some imprisoned for the ideas therein, some confined to cells. Some stolen, some kidnapped, some tumble into rivers and oceans, a few have travelled into space and hovered weightlessly under the patient and uncountable stars.
Some humble, some pompous, some evil, some crammed with inextinguishable joy. Some born to delight children, some to poke the powerful, some to pierce the heart. Some have no words at all and some are so wordy as to be unintelligible. Some earnest, some nefarious, some renowned, most obscure. Some advance the universe in extraordinary ways, many distract and delay rather than enthrall or edify. Some filled with lust, some with song, some brave, some craven. Some famous for no reason, others incredibly unsung.
All have layers upon layers and are more subtle than