entirely safe and fun

The lovely Punam is currently reading the Book Whose Name We Shall Not Speak. The title may have something to do with a written character, which is deep red, but beyond this I can say no more, as I value my safety and the soundness of my mind. To do any more than hint at the Book’s True Name — and especially to speak Its dread title aloud — might attract Its fell attentions. The rites to appease It, once It has been aroused, are inconvenient at best, dangerous at worst. The author, the “Mad Puritan” Nathaniel Hawthorne, travestied his own fine short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” for elements of the plot, and that reckless act may have cost him his life fourteen short years later.

I suspect that most who read the Awful Book do so only when required, usually in high school. Punam, encountering It outside of that context, is able to keep Its power in check by laughing at It regularly, and It is withering under her dismissive reading eye. As she reads each leaf in her 1939 paperback edition, it crumbles and falls away from the binding; her ministrations have tramsmuted It from a Volume Entire into a Pile of Pages. The Book repels all but the staunchest reader, but Punam is simply too mickle a sorceress for even Its sanity-blasting revelations.