The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (The Library Trilogy, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

People called her Livira because, like the weed, you couldn’t keep her down.

A memory like a steel trap seemed more of a curse than a blessing. A poorer memory, one that ran the dry glare of one day into the next, might stop the time weighing so heavily even on young shoulders.

I use my memory for evil! But that’s really all it’s good for, as grudges and vengeance is all it can remember.

“There are no useless skills, girl. Only talents that have yet to find an application.”

Positive thinking, eh?

Truth will set you free . . . from certainty, comfort, and the beliefs upon which we rely for sanity . . .

Sanity is overrated. I’d rather have the truth.

The Mechanism’s pull was that while a reader’s imagination could animate a book inside their head, the Mechanism would build that world around you. It offered the contents of each book as something to be physically experienced, walked through, partaken in, interrogated, shared. You could immerse yourself in the book in whatever way you might desire.

Wouldn’t mind some of that.

Kerrol said that it was in people’s nature to feel trapped, and that being unable to see what had hold of them was what led so many into dark places within their own minds.

“And if she’d hit you just then?” The woman had seemed genuinely worried. “Well, then I might have been forced to reach for the sharpest weapon at my disposal.” Yute continued to stride forward and raised his arms as if he might be summoning a thunderbolt. “Sarcasm.” Livira wasn’t sure what sarcasm was, but it sounded pretty bad.

Start a tale, just a little tale that should fade and die—take your eye off it for just a moment and when you turn back it’s grown big enough to grab you up in its teeth and shake you. That’s how it is. All our lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce.

For someone so deeply versed in all the levels of intimacy and interaction that people share, Kerrol stood alone among them for never having expressed any interest in the opposite sex or his own. Perhaps after you’d minutely dissected something it was hard to properly engage with it. That might be the price he’d paid for his insights.

Might have a point there. Bears further examination…

Master Yute had said that writing is an exercise in letting your mind wander but making sure that it keeps what it picks up on the way.

Master Yute is a smart man.

“We deal in affirmation. People don’t want truth. They say that they do but what they mean is that they want the truth to agree with them. Take ninety-nine books that say one thing and one that says the opposite. If that opposite was what the customer was hoping to hear, they’ll put their stock in the single volume. In this manner we learn more regarding human nature from closed books than from anything that might be written within them.”

Meelan knew he was more interested in her than she was in him. Both of them knew it and both of them knew they both knew it.

Ain’t that a bitch though.

But most of the people down there”—he nodded towards the carpet of lights spread out below them—“most of them think money would change who they are, and that’s the thing: you take yourself with you wherever you go. Money can’t buy a new you.

All of us in our secret hearts, in our empty moments of contemplation, stumble into the understanding that nothing matters. There’s a cold shock of realisation and, in that moment, we know that nothing at all is of the least consequence. Ultimately, we’re all just spinning our wheels, seeking to avoid pain until the clock winds down and our time is spent. To give someone purpose is to free them, however briefly, from the spectre of that knowledge.”

‘Nostalgia is the best and the worst feeling—complex—nothing has the ability to so delight and wound us simultaneously, except perhaps for love.’ ”

Both are feelings best avoided 😂

“What does nostalgia mean to a child? An abstraction. A standing stone waiting for them in the mist. Walk a path across some decades, any path you like, and the word will gather weight. It will come to you trailing maybes and might-have-beens. Nostalgia is a drug, a knife. Against young skin it carries a dull edge, but time will teach you that nostalgia cuts—and that it’s a blade we cannot keep from applying to our own flesh.”

“Men, Livira, are like books—easy enough to read if you know the right tongue. But first you’ve got to get the cover open.”

It’s in the nature of humans to want to belong to a group, to want to be accepted, appreciated, and needed. What is most frightening about their kind are the sacrifices they are prepared to make in order to become part of such a tribe, clique, sect, sewing circle, cult, or book club. Reason and morality are often at the top of the list of what must be surrendered as part of the club fees. Truth becomes a collective property, an adaptable shield used to shelter the in-group from those outside. Dogs, on the other hand, are great.

She noticed his hand moving unconsciously to hold his upper arm where she’d briefly laid her fingers. It was, she thought, the reaction of someone unused to being touched, someone unsettled by it, but wanting more.

Time would tell. A kiss could lead to all sorts of places. Not all of them good. The library’s stories had taught her this before practice confirmed it. She had her eyes open about that, she wasn’t an idiot, as the majority of girls in the stories seemed to be.

raging. He would return. He would find a way. Whether it took him or her or both of them to their hundredth year, he would place himself before her one more time and accept her judgement. He would speak his mind if she would let him, hand her the words to wound him with, throw dignity aside if that was what was required to place truth between them. And if her fury remained—if hate was all she had for him—he would let that run its course, offer his heart to her dagger in place of those who had injured her. And at last, if his dramatics went unanswered, he would leave, knowing that he had for once taken his shot.

“People die, brother. That’s what I’ve learned. Life’s cheap, easily spent. And if there’s any joy to be had it’s in the moments between. So, when you find something that makes you happy you take it with both hands, and you hold on to it for as long as you can. It’s not going to last. It will be taken from you. But that’s not the point. The point is that you took your chance, you drank the wine, you took what good you could from the world, and you gave it yours.”

He’d been thinking of their kiss for most of the walk from the forest. For most of the time since it had happened, in fact. Technically, for centuries. It didn’t seem real anymore. The desire to repeat it felt ridiculously strong. As strong, perhaps, as the addictions that drugs could breed. The idea that Livira might see his need—how shallow he was, how dependent on her beauty— was not one he felt comfortable with.

“Starval says oversharing is the best cover for secrets. If people believe you could no more hold a secret than a hot stone, then they won’t pry.”

think that when you saw me truly your stomach turned. That I’m ugly to your eyes. I tell myself that if you were someone I should be interested in then you wouldn’t care what I looked like. You’d care who I am.”

“We’re all the story we tell about ourselves, silly.” Another wave rocked them. “That’s all anyone ever is—the story they tell, and the stories told about them. Fiction captures more than facts do. That’s why the library keeps it. It’s the most important part of our memories.”