Nom and other inside jokes

thebookstheygaveme:

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.”

I was nineteen when I met him. That first summer together was adventures and night swimming and secrets and reading together in bed. I gave him six or seven of my favorite novels (Salinger and Nabakov mostly, I think), and in exchange he lent me his copy of Ender’s Game. He told me that this was his favorite book and that he had read and reread it countless times.

I believe that you can tell almost everything you could need to know about a person by their favorite literature. I found myself relating his behaviors to quotes I found within the text and so this childhood book of his began to serve as a silent explanation. He fancied himself to be Ender, a tortured boy with the weight of the universe on his shoulders. But he was not a boy, he was a man, and I never saw the humanity in him that I did in Ender.

Two and a half years have passed since I first opened the book, and he and I are strangers now. I have learned that he shares that book with all of the girls that he adores, and it was not some testament to our unique bond. 

It’s a good book though; I can’t really blame him. 

Let’s be honest. I started reading Ender’s Game more because of this blog post than a dire need to start a new book. I’m only a sci-fi nerd when I want to be. In a weird subconscious-y way that doesn’t even subtle-y connect you to Ender, I have no idea why I thought science, above all things, would help me understand you but a week ago it seemed like the only fair and sensible thing to do. And instead I got an inconceivably brilliant and repulsive universe where the baby genius is king— naturally our favorite kind of universes. I still have no idea why you are the way you are.