A July Novel

I didn’t think that buffalo liked books but this one seemed to want mine. With two thousand pounds of muscle and the unpredictable temperament of an angry child, the animal would send anyone with half of a brain straight in the other direction. As it zigzagged its way towards where I sat, I felt no inclination to back away. The reason for this was simple: I was in Nashville mourning the death of my father.
Or at least it felt like that at the time. I was actually sitting on a rock 50 miles outside of Billings, Montana, reading a tattered paperback that I had bought for five dollars at a gas station near Wilson, Wyoming. I was backpacking with a few friends who were napping under some fir trees. The spy novel—a genre not known for its intellectual depth––seemed just like another July book. …show more content…
You don’t expect to grow from having read the book and the book seems even less inclined to convince you otherwise. Reading a July book is like watching a TV show. You find the book with the most far-fetched premise or most colorful cover. Whenever you have a free moment you pull it out, open it to wherever you left off and lazily scan the page, soaking in all the superficial details until you feel it’s time to close it. You feel no different than when you started. The writer is uninterested. The reader is uninterested. You walk away from it five hours older. Until that point I believed in July books’ existence as a subclass of literature, but my perception changed with my reaction (or lack thereof) to the animal making its way towards where I was