RedT Reads Randomly

It's the end of the world as we know it and he wanders the deserted city looking for his lost friend Sheba, for food, and . . . "He read what he could find, and felt the list of words growing inside his head like weeds, like fungus – – a simile he used after reading a biology textbook. There were several buildings in the city with walls of books rising to the ceiling. Among these volumes he found a few that he liked, stories of knights and dragons. There were comic books, too, along with books filled with numbers and equations.

It was so alien, acquiring information this way.  It almost felt like theft, and sometimes he would read a passage and expect the words to be gone from the page, absorbed by his mind. He also felt that he was wasting valuable time. He was reading picture books about men wearing capes while Sheba lay dying somewhere.  

But he could hardly get enough of the text. He slept less and less because he could not wait to read again. He would often feel intense relief to find that  the books he had left nearby were still there when he opened his eyes."

(My bold.)

Page 48 of 356