The books he was given or borrowed or bought were great at making him look smarter than he actually was. They lay around the house inviting people to judge him in a positive light yet that story was just as fictitious as the novels on the second shelf of the birch Kilby bookcase he’d purchased last week from Ikea. The same piece of flat-pack furniture that he most certainly did not “Do himself“.
If they had taken a closer look, they’d have noticed pristine pages, no creased corners, absent bookmarks, un-peeled price stickers and a lack of cracked spines. If they looked really closely they’d have even found a trilogy of novels still bound in plastic wrap.
