And when I don’t, what’s his next move? Instead of writing to ask me why I’m passing up this once-in-a-lifetime chance to be the inaugural member of Billy’s Book Club, he decides, all on his own, that he knows the reason: bibliophobia! No need to take guidance from me before defining my inner reality; I’m only a woman, after all, and every male person must feel free to invent my thoughts and emotions in accordance with what suits them best.

If anybody more reasonable and less appropriative (in other words, female) wants to know how I’m really feeling, I’ll tell you: I’m disinclined to read the novels Billy sent me, and not only because they came from him.

Beloved by Toni Morrison? A woman responds to the barbarism of slavery by murdering her daughter. Why not kill her male master or the male slave traders instead – the men responsible for all the misery? (Naturally, the murdered baby is a girl, as are nearly all murder victims in fiction.)

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, an author famous for treating women atrociously? Thanks, but I’d rather not read about children who believe they must sacrifice their own lives so that the all-important father figure can live unimpeded, devoting all his precious resources to himself alone. If that storyline isn’t the epitome of patriarchy apologism, I don’t know what is.

I don’t hate and fear books, Billy. I just want to make my own reading choices. Is that okay with you?

By the way, your definition of a book is pure, undiluted horseshit. A book – whether it’s a novel, a volume of poetry, a memoir or a macramé manual – is the words, not the paper object. Therefore, even if I did hate the paper objects, as you claim, I could still read all the books I wanted to read, on my iPad, and I would not be a bibliophobe at all. I’m surprised I need to tell you this, Billy. You seem to understand it in relation to people: eternal Awareness that can never die and all that? The only part that perishes is the physical body, remember?

Why should books be any different? The soul of a novel is its story, which is made up of words. As long as you’ve got the words, you don’t need anything else – certainly not a brick-shaped paper thing that will start to smell and turn yellow as the years go by.

Unless I’m only saying all this because of my phobia. Yellow, smelly pages? Sounds like bibliophobic language to me – until we remind ourselves of what a book is and what it isn’t.