I`d like to make this a Books to Read entry, but I`m afraid I cannot, because this is not a book; it`s just a short story, a part of an almanac... But, a readaholic that I am, I find it really scary!
The story titled Книга - лучший подарок ("The Best Gift Is A Book"), by Дарья Зарубина, goes, more or less, like this: after a just another Doomsday, with nothing to eat any longer there, a chap almost dead with hunger and cold in his flat full of books is found by another chap, a looter, and saved by the latter thanks to books used as firewood. The saviour tells the saved chap there`s a place where they give you good real olden-days food in exchange for books. They take some books and go there, and, miraculously, in a starving world, they get a real wonderful meal. And the happy hostess treats them to some exquisite drinks, to boot.
Coming back to his cold flat, the guy feels he must leaf through another edition of the book he has just exchanged for the meal. His premonition proves right: in the book, none of the descriptions of rich feasts the book abounded in are left. The proprietress of the feeding place seems to be able, somehow, extract the descriptions of meals from books and make them real meals...
I`m not sure which does scare me more: destroying books or annihilating the tasty scenes just for the sake of a meal. Yup, I can understand a starving world and all that, but... but... somehow, I find this short story more scary than any Living/Walking/Angry Dead there are...
What say you, fellow Readaholics? I would really appreciate your opinions concerning this.
For those who read Russian, here`s a link (kinda sorta) to the story: http://mreadz.com/new/index.php?id=300650&pages=23 ; "kinda sorta" because I have not been able to find anything leading to the story proper; you`ll have to click the previous page if you want to read it from the beginning...
Sorry about that; I suppose that`s better than nothing, anyway...
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