When toddlers are acquiring language, we speak to them in our lowest unit of thought: favourites—i.e., ranking, scarcity. We’re saying the merit of a book is relative to other books, not internal, eternal, but external. We’ve become self-serious buffoons, rebranding the happy bookworm as an important arbiter of taste, labouring over the significant goal to consume thirty books this year. If you work at a bookstore, don’t curate a Staff Picks list. Can you just tell me about the books?