We readers ask a lot of our writers. We know what we like, but sometimes we prefer something new. We want to be taken along on the ride, but won’t tolerate being taken for a ride. We may want to learn something, but we don’t care to be lectured. We like a bit of fun, but can’t bear to be mocked. Yet we can also be quite generous. We don’t mind giving up control of our lives for the few hours it may take us to read a book, letting the writer take the tiller for a while. We are willing to believe in the events and characters the writer creates, to think and feel what the writer tells us to. And we go along with the greatest fiction of all: that the writer is omniscient and omnipresent. Not only do we collaborate in this great delusion, we encourage it.