The feel of a book

I have been reading The Time Traveler's Wife, and it is extraordinary. I have a paperback copy but it has to be the best feeling book I have ever touched, so far to date. The pages are smooth like they are dusted with powder and I expect them to smell like roses. My hands should look like I've been playing in my grandmother's body powder. The cover is satiny except for the embossed letters of the title and author and the spine's photograph is shiny and acts like a no slip grip for the reader. The book is heavy with words and while one is carrying it it bends so gently like rain soaked flower petals. Flowers are so delicate and I worry when the rain is pounding them closed and stuck to one side of the pot, you are sure they will wither and die before it's over. The book never fails to open and and it lies flat. The pages are thinner than other books I read but it's a pleasure to turn them and continue with the story. It has a sense of fluidity, an ability to adapt to any reader's hands and become what is required of it and go where one needs it the most. This is exactly how this novel, this story of two lovers should feel.

I imagine that the perfect copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon will feel this way.


*the book image is the exact edition I have, go out and give it a feel