If you’re a completionist, I’ve been forcing you to read about books I was forced to read. Sorry about that. First, there was Light Years. Then, there was The Forever War. Then, there was this post. Let’s hold hands and get through it together.

I was scheduled to have dinner with Robert Anthony Siegel at the Book Expo America’s Winter Institute in Portland, so I fetl obligated to read All Will Be Revealed. I didn’t want to be the chucklehead at the table who hadn’t read the book. It was my first BEA, and I didn’t know I could fake it.

Macadam-Cage sent me a Review Copy before there was any artwork chosen, simple red paper with black print. I looked at the back cover. Pornography? Yes! Oh, it’s a period piece. Reading about pornography, then. Reading about late 19th century, still-photograph pornography. And explorers. And mediums. Please, just punch me in the face. Hard.

On the plane flying to Portland, I imagined a group of people seated at the table of some dimly-lit, trendy restaurant. The Vice President of Macadam-Cage would turn and ask, in her clipped British accent, “So, Aaron, what did you think of Rob’s work?” Everyone would go quiet and look at me. My mouth would work like a fish out of water. I’d hear a chorus of poorly-suppressed giggles and few minutes of guttural noises. I’d realize those strange noise were coming from my own throat, my eyes would bug wide, and I’d pass out in my plate of beef bordelaise.

Okay, I thought, ripping the book from my carry-on bag, I’ll read the damned thing.

“All Will Be Revealed” on libraries:

“…the silence was of a very particular kind, different from the rest of the house – the silence of arrested motion. It was as if those thousands of books were birds, and a signal would send them into flight.”

“All Will Be Revealed” on why living with models is impossible:

“…the fault is with photography itself. Photographs are perfect things, and people are not. It’s maddening to have to live with that discrepancy, day in and day out.”

“All Will Be Revealed” on the nature of life:

“…there is nothing other than this turning, round and round again. Everything is connected to everything else, everything moves in a great wheel, and the emptiness in the center is God.”

“All Will Be Revealed” on the desire to go down in history:

“How many men manage to leave their imprint upon humanity in this way – not on the outside, the way we look, but on our very natures, what we want? The inventor of ice cream managed it, as did the first horticulturalist to domesticate the tobacco plant. Gutenberg did it, and so did Moses – Moses with his tablets, inventor of the desire to be good. It was select company. [The pornographer]’s place in history would be assured.”

I may have overdone it at the dinner; I had these passages memorized. Melanie, Macadam Cage’s Sales & Marketing Director, was actually British. And Robert Anthony Siegel was so humble and nice, it was a pleasure speaking with him. His book is a romantic, fascinating page-turner I can’t recommend heartily enough.

Plus, it’s got naked people.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my stories of books I read at the barrel of a literary, rather than literal, gun. Now go and read them yourself, or I’ll shoot you.