books and bad ideas (first edit)

[alsayn]

Thank you for all of the advice! I went ahead and scrapped most of the beginnings and rearranged the rest. I also fixed the weird cliche, italicized bits (which I added in about 30 seconds before I posted this, so go figure they wouldn't fit well). I really wanted to hang onto the page numbers because they're a remnant from an older draft of this piece. However, they don't make sense anymore, so I'm trying something a bit different.