By Lydia Davis, published in the 2013 issue of NOON. Davis’s “Five Stories from Flaubert” appeared in the November 2010 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

I’m simply not interested in reading this book. I was not interested in reading the last one I tried, either. I’m less and less interested in reading any of the books I have, though they are reasonably good, I suppose.

Just as, the other day, when I went out to the back yard, planning to gather up some sticks and branches and carry them to the pile in the far corner of the meadow, I…