the bookworm proper is rare and disciplined. it enters a book once, consumes exactly one word, and departs through a tunnel of its own making. the word is gone — not blackened, not faded, but absent — and the surrounding sentence continues without it.
the missing word is, in every case, the word the book could most spare. this is itself the chief contribution of the species to librarianship: a well-aged volume that has been visited by several such worms is often improved.
the worm prefers nouns. it does not eat the same word twice, even across editions. it is fond of works on naturata, indifferent to fiction, and avoids catalogues out of professional respect. one suspects the worm responsible for some lacunae.
— the page once read the kettle whistled in the — the worm took the next word. it has been a better sentence ever since. — reader, unnamed.