It’s nearly sundown on a late winter day, the blockbuster movie you’ve been waiting months to see has finally arrived. As you’re on your way back from the mailbox, you pass your TBR book pile. Reality Boy is on top. Absently you pick it up, flip it open, read the dust jacket. You turn a few pages. Part One. You turn another page. Start reading.
You look up. It’s dark. You’re on the couch, feet propped up. The Netflix envelope is on the coffee table, unopened. The TV is dark. Part Two has slipped past your fingers. You turn the page.
It’s past midnight. Part Three has came and went. Your stomach rumbles. You’ve forgotten about dinner. You have to pee. You set the book down and head to the bathroom. There’s a bungi cord hooked to your waist, slowing your progress, pulling you back. You retrieve the book, read it on the way there, read it while there, read it on the way back to the couch.
A single light burns in the living room. The dogs are asleep. The cats are asleep. You’ve reached that magical point that exists in very few books. That point near the end where you’re torn between a head long rush to the turning of the last page and reining yourself in because you don’t want that page to come.
There are but a handful of writers I’m jealous of. A.S. King has been, and continues to be, one of them.
