QUESTIONS for the AVID READER Part VI

avaland suggested this question, which probably needs a revisit after the past couple of years


image from locationshub

QUESTION 42: Books to Movies to Other Media and Back

Given life over the past nearly two years, we've all probably had more screen time than usual. Think back over all those hours.

Do you have a favourite movie, TV show, or streaming service adaptation of a given book?
Does the adaptation have to be faithful to the original, or if it's good, can it deviate like the Isaac Asimov Foundation series (estimated by LT's own Dukedom_Enough to be only 25% original content). How far can it deviate before it bears no resemblance to the original?

Going the other way, how about original movies, TV shows, or streaming series that then became a book, like Murder She Wrote? Is this pure greed on the part of the publishers, or does it add to the original format?

While it's easy to find things going from book to screen, screen to book may be harder to find. Here's a link provided by avaland that can get you started: https://onedio.co/content/22-popular-movies-that-were-turned-into-books-for-some...
There were some real surprises there for me.

>1 SassyLassy: Q42

Generally I avoid films adapted from books that I liked/responded to a lot. For example, I have no wish to see the film of Call Me by your Name.

Broadly speaking, the world of a novel is too extensive to be captured in a film, although occasionally a series may begin to touch it.

A better match is a film of a short story. Here, the outstanding example of a successful transcription is John Huston's 1987 film of James Joyce's story, "The Dead", now at long last available to stream. I remember a beautiful Russian version from 1960 of Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Dog".

>1 SassyLassy: Q42

I almost never watch adaptations of books I love - they can never be exactly the same and the actors will supersede my idea of the characters and it gets messy. Emphasis on almost though - I plan to watch both Dune and the Foundation series - I am just steeling myself for them.

Outside of the pure physical appearances of the characters, I treat films as parallel versions of the books - that way I do not get disappointed. That's why I did not have that much trouble with Game of Thrones - I love the books, I love the series - they are two possible ways to tell the story. As long as you keep them separate in your head (as if they were parallel realities?), I am fine with it.

And there is The Shawshank Redemption. The novella it is based on is not bad but the movie is much better (and had been one of my favorite movies for decades). One of my favorite Bulgarian movies (Yesterday: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0170783/ ) is also based on a book - and I like it more than I like the book. In both cases I saw and loved the movies long before I read the original texts. Did that make a difference? Maybe.

The other direction - in the genre world novelizations are almost the norm - stating with Doctor Who (yeah, I know - TV and not movies but it applies here) and the Star Wars movies, if the movie is worth seeing, there will be a novelization. I actually "met" some of these movies for the first time as novels. Before DVDs and Streaming, that sometimes was the only way to get to know them. These days most novelizations are adding extra back stories and other parts and are still worth reading. And of course there are the famous examples where it all started as a movie but got turned into a successful novel: "2001: A Space Odyssey" for example (although the history here is even more convoluted because the movie is inspired by pre-existing stories by Clarke ("The Sentinel" mainly) so it a way it was already a type of adaptation). If anything, I was surprised that not all movies get novelized in the English world (noone ever novelized a Bulgarian movie that I know of). :)

And in some cases, these novelizations will start a whole book series or spawn one.

Talking about that, early movies did not get novelized, they got "radio-ized" - a radio play which abridges the story in 30-60 minutes usually, very often with the same cast of the real movie. A lot of these survived (a lot of radio plays had been lost to the mist of time) and they serve a similar purpose to novelizations.

And there is the symbiosis between comics, live action movies, TV series and animation where some franchises cross in and out, adapting material from each other - the TV series Arrow used the DC comics material and then in turn DC comics created new comics in the world of the TV Arrow - some of them adapting things from the series. MCU did pretty much the same with the movies series. Those franchises are so interwoven these days that sometimes it is very hard to find out if a movie adapted a comics or a novel or vice versa and very often it may be valid in both directions. That's a bit outside of where the question started but it does connect in a way. And it had also informed my way of thinking of adaptations.

When I read a book, esp one I love, my mind makes an image, a video as I read. So it was often is very hard for me to watch movies based on books. This has changed as Ive gotten older, I m ore willing to accept the changed to my video as long as there is some sense to it. Hated what they did to Wicked in the musical, even destroying the ending. Hated the movie Cloud Atlas, even Tom Hanks couldn't save it. But loved the newest remake of Little Women, one of my fav books from childhood. And was very impressed with the new Dune, despite what they had to leave behind (the actors were wonderful which helps) And some movies make the book better : Cider House Rules was a good example, an excellent book that badly needed an editor, and the movie did just that splendidly.

I can't remember reading a book based on the movie, tho I know they are out there. Some animated adaptations to books like Jungle books and Coraline were wonderful.. Others like Hunchback of Notre Dame and Anatasia turns the stories and histories in to hot messes. The later esp, as it is so different from the actual history that it should have been called something else

I esp love anime takes on books: Howls Moving Castle my father's dragon

>3 AnnieMod: I treat films as parallel versions of the books - that way I do not get disappointed

yes this is often the case. But you mention Game of Thrones I was fine with it until GRRM did not finish the books so the ending was a mess.

>4 cindydavid4: At least it was a spectacular mess :) I did not mind these last seasons - they had put themselves in a tight corner with not so much space to maneuver. So I just enjoyed the ride.

Q42:

Given that this is Q42, it’s almost obligatory to talk about movies that were made from TV series that were adaptations of books (four-part trilogies) that were themselves adaptations of radio series…. But I shan’t, I’ll leave that to experts. I’ve probably got that sequence wrong, but it did start out on radio.

I think my all-time favourite is Zazie dans le Métro (book then movie), where Raymond Queneau’s novel is a riot of language games that clearly wouldn’t work anywhere except on paper, but Louis Malle’s film brilliantly and unexpectedly turns them all into totally surreal visual jokes.

The third man, the first one in that list of “novelisations”, is probably the case where film-into-novel is most nearly legitimate: Carol Reed commissioned the screenplay from an established novelist, Graham Greene, who wrote the first version of it as a novella before reworking it into screenplay format. When the film was a success he decided to publish the novella as well.

The adaptation I’ve watched most recently is Dona Flor and her two husbands, where the film had to condense the story of a rather long novel, and thus made it rather less subtle and interesting, but it was good to get a visual impression of what Salvador de Bahia really looks like, and it was a very funny film, in a seventies sort of way...

Another one I enjoyed during the last couple of years was the East German Spur der Steine, where the book was counted as a DDR classic, its criticism of Party narrow-mindedness and the inertia of industrial bureaucracy being seen as healthy and relevant, but the film adaptation by Frank Beyer (which is actually less explicit) came out just at the wrong moment politically, and was banned.

There are plenty of good films made from mediocre novels, of course (and vice-versa).

honestly my movie standards and expectations have really dropped over the last 17 years of being a parent. Avenger movies are now favorites. Before kids i had more interest in more "artsy" films and, especially, in good dialogue within the film. And I had no interest in special effects, except as being good enough not to notice it.

That plays into my feelings in the book-to-movie adaption. My standards have become low, whereas previously I was horrified if the movie failed to capture key aspects of the book.

I recently saw Dune, and thought it was terrific, even as it missed some important ... impressions. I was intrigued with Ready Player One. I saw the movie first and it was fun. Then read the book...they are pretty much completely different stories, with a couple common set-up themes. The Wheel of Time season begins this month. I'm really looking forward to it, and hope I'm not comparing to the book very much or it will have no chance. A few vivid elements will suffice for lots of misses.

A tangent: I remember loving the Lord of the Rings series when it came out in theatres. Now I find those movies really long and boring. The books aren't boring, so that's strange. But the thing is the movie worked for its time - it brought out the gore and violence in a way never managed before within this story, and it added a new level of special effects (that aren't as special now) and magnificent scenery. It did not capture the Tolkien prose, the sense of beauty within the text in several places (I think it's a weirdly ugly movie), or the novel's (maybe spotty) plot drive.

Movie/TV versions of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the later Harry Potter books, and anything else I found tiresome to read are always better than the books, but that's totally subjective. (Interesting that all my examples are fantasies ...)

I liked the Sean Penn version of All the King's Men. It was necessarily abridged, but it took so much of the dialogue and ambience from the book that I didn't miss some of the side plots.

I have always been interested in various cinematic treatments of The Turn of the Screw. The one with Michelle Dockery, imo, captured all the ambiguity of the original story.

About a Boy was a good film adaptation of the Hornby novel, even though a lot of details and plot points were changed. So was Let Me In, from Lindqvist's vampire novel, Let the Right One In.

About 10 or 15 years ago, the BBC did adaptations of all of Jane Austin's novels, and the adaptations were uniformly dreadful, though I have enjoyed some filmed versions.

I guess I am looking for a movie to amplify something I liked in a book, show me something new about it. I am less likely to dislike film versions of books than I used to be.

As bookish as I am, I am also a very visual person, too. I like to see/watch visual adaptations of books I've read. They don't take away my experience with the book. I'm curious what the writers of various kinds of adaptations include and what they do not, and of how they envision this scene or that one. What I want from it as a reader of the book, is a adaption that honors the story and keeps the essence of it.

And less we forget: how current cultural norms and trends might affect an adaptation.

As far as movie/tv being made into books, I don't generally read a book AFTER I have seen it as a visual adaptation.

Like many above, I'm not usually keen to see a film or any other kind of visual adaptation of a book I love, although now that I think about it, I love actual illustrations in a book. My earliest readings of Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson had wonderful illustrations that would keep me up at night, worried that Fagin might find me, or that I would be sent up that staircase that led nowhere.

I have, however, sought out books after seeing the film. Two stood out for me as being better than their books: The Reader, and Revolutionary Road.

This weekend though I saw Where'd You Go, Bernadette, which convinced me to never read the book.

>9 avaland: ...current cultural norms and trends might affect an adaptation
I felt like that about some of the presentations of Tess in Polanski's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and thought it lent a not quite realistic note that was distracting in an otherwise good film.

image from DW.com is of the 2004 Anna Amalia Library fire

QUESTION 43: What Would You Rescue?

Over in another group, avaland was speaking of a book with a house fire where something of great importance to the protagonist was rescued. This made me wonder, which of your books would you rush to save first?

An old copy of Kipling’s two Jungle Books. The date inside is 1898. Whether that date means the book is really that old or not I don’t know. I began reading it in the early 1960s. It had belonged to my mother’s brother, and I assume to other children before him. I read it to death, especially the tale of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Oh I loved that story!

The book isn’t a collectible. It’s beat all to death. It might seem unfortunate that it hasn't been treated better . . . yet I can’t think of a better fate for a book—to have gratified generations of children so much that it has been loved to tatters. That’s the one I’d risk fire to save.

Q43: Probably the library ones - or on top of the fire, I’ll also have to pay for them. And my passport and other docs - much easier to get back on your feet if you do not loose these in the fire as well.

I have some expensive books around the house but none is important enough to risk my life over. No book is. Even if that happens where my childhood books are (that have memories and so on) - well, books are replaceable. And even if they are not - they are just paper. (Just don’t try to borrow and not return them - I may forget they are just paper).

Like Annie, I wouldn’t put myself in danger. But if i had a safe 5 minutes I would grab what I’m reading now, a maybe what i plan to read next, and my laptop, and scoot out. Another 5 minutes and I might grab my Bruce Chatwin copies, and Running After Antelope, and Goodbye to a River, and a few others whose specific physical existence I’m attached to.

I'll assume the cats, important papers, and computer hard drive have already been saved. The only irreplaceable hardcopy book would be my mother's Jane Eyre that is a tactile link to one of the good memories I have of her.

In this hypothetical fire which allows time for rational thought and deliberate action, there are out-of-print LPs that I might prefer to save over most of my books.

>12 dypaloh: Love that! and yeah it was probably that old, and read so much. I know Kipling has issues but loved Jungle book, remember my 6th grade teacher reading us rikki tikki tavi, and yearly had my preschool students act out The elephant child. I have a nice small set of those Just So books. But those aren't nec the ones Id keep

Cats, and our fireproof safe with imp papers first. Unfortunately we have lots of stuff we gathered from 30+ years of living, traveling, reading, that I don't think Id know were to begin. I know Id try to save about 20 of my book collection but cant see that being possible. With the internet, so much that is 'lost' still exists somewhere, if only in an image. But I think that my memories of them would stay in my mind, for a while at least

I guess Id choose my old copy of Little Women that we found in Cambridge, that I couldn't afford, and my DH bought it anyway and gave it to me on our anniversary. We don't have any kids, so it would certainly solve the problem of where all this stuff is going to when we die

>43 nohrt4me2: Michael just told me that many of his would burn quickly while he was still trying to decide (all those 1950s and 60s mass market fire hazards....)

As for me, I dunno, at this point in my life, I probably would not attempt to save books—which will indeed make quite a fire! Not sure I'd have time to climb the library ladder to rescue anything specific....but I'd be sure to tuck away a portion of the insurance money for new books....

Q43 Brands plucked from the burning

Like >13 AnnieMod: said.
(We’re all far too sensible, aren’t we? Years of being trained to know that you don’t mess about when there’s a fire…)

On the other hand, we could always hypothesise the existence of fire-browsers(*), who would scan our flaming shelves for us unscathed, and select books as required. They would, of course, always home in on copies of Fahrenheit 451, but that’s not a problem for me, as I don’t have one at present.

Obviously what I’d like to save most are the books with association value, especially things that belonged to people in earlier generations of my family and with inscriptions and annotations in them. Bibles, my great-great-aunt’s Walter Scott, that sort of thing. And maybe my old and very familiar copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse — I know I’d miss that and a replacement new-old copy just wouldn’t be the same. Of course, I have a lot of things that would be hard to replace and I would be very sorry to lose them, but I don’t think there is really much that is both rare and necessary to my life.

Maybe the best answer is the one that Umberto Eco would presumably give: “Save the books on the TBR shelf first”

—-

(*)like fire-bowsers, but slightly longer

“Save the books on the TBR shelf first”

ha, yes! but that 'shelf'/mountain would be as much as my 20 other books Id want to save.

>1 SassyLassy: Q 42

I adore books made into movies. Sure, sometimes they fail, often the book is better, but that doesn't matter. Sometimes the film is way better (I'm looking at you, Room With a View.) I could list hundreds of fabulous films made from books . . . I'm a visual person, so I love the cinematography, the costumes, the attractive actors, the gorgeous settings, and also the music.

Q 43

I wouldn't save my books in a fire. My insurance will replace them.

Surprised at how many people are sensible and wouldn't rush in for the books.

>12 dypaloh: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a wonderful story. My version had beautiful illustrations, but who knows who has it now. I would like to have it still.

>19 thorold: Great expression "association value". Replacement copies just aren't the same.

>18 avaland: Too funny Michael

>21 Nickelini: My insurance will replace them.
Someone told me that insurance is a great reason to enter your books in LT, so that there will be a record for the insurers. Very practical, but not the first things about LT that comes to mind.
Room with a View Maybe it's time to watch some of those Merchant-Ivory movies again.

>17 cindydavid4: A total aside, but why would you have to save a fireproof safe? Go with Little Women.

true that; just thinking of impt papers but they would be well protected. Yes, LW

Ah, what an anxiety-producing question. I don't collect rare books, first editions, or signed copies, though I probably have a few of all three, and I'm not sure those are what I'd run to grab first. My entire library is, technically, replaceable—it's the totality of it that's irreplaceable, and many of the books in it for reasons that don't have to do with their rarity, mostly because they were gifts from people I love. So it's hard to prioritize them, because in the end they're still just ink on paper. My first impulse would be to save the artwork on the walls, which really is irreplaceable... and, I know, not the point of this question.

>24 lisapeet: Oooh, art work - that adds a different dimension entirely and does provoke anxiety!

>12 dypaloh: for a few years when I was a kid one TV station would play the animated for Rikki-Tikki-Tavi once a year - can't remember if it was Christmas or another time. But I loved and it waited for it. The one year (around 1981?) they didn't play it, and I cried. I bought a copy for my kids, but for them it was just another picture book.

This is a question I've been wanting to ask for sometime, but have been, well, avoiding it for fear that it may not be taken in the enquiring spirit in which it is meant.



QUESTION 44: Avoidance

Often in CR there will be a really good review of a book which discusses uncomfortable problems or topics some readers would rather avoid. In the comments following the review, there will be variations of "It's too upsetting for me so I'll pass".

Why are such books avoided? Is it because readers don't want to learn about or think about real world problems? Is it because these problems are too close to home?

Does it make a difference if they are set in another country or era?

If reading is a steady diet of "comfortable" books, predictable in theme and resolution, what is gained from reading a whole succession of them?

>27 SassyLassy:

Ooo, it takes a brave soul these days to so much as give a hint of criticism of the way people are reading, or to imply that reading ought to be anything but a comfort. Brace yourself, Sassy! :)

I'm old-fashioned enough to agree with Kafka:

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

...while knowing that I didn't and wouldn't follow that model 100% of the time (and let's recall Kafka too made time for many a frivolous pursuit, from the moving pictures to the brothels).

But I think what is important is knowing that reading can be important, that it can do things to us which change us and grow us. I regard this with awe and respect, such as I felt as a child when I saw a library for the first time and for a long time every time I took a new book into my hands.

>27 SassyLassy: Q#44

There's an immediate example that comes to my mind: Emma Donoghue's Room. At first the concept was interesting — how to explain a traumatizing world to a child who must be prevented from actually understanding that world. But at the point where the child is watching from the wardrobe as his mother is assaulted, I balked.

Others have assured me that the situation improves and the book actually ends positively, but I don't care; it's more disturbing than I wish to deal with. I wonder if it's that Donoghue is skillfull at placing the reader right in the situation, whereas other authors may use distancing techniques.

Many years ago I read John Fowles's The Collector. I wonder how I'd react to that now? I don't intend to find out, though.

For nearly forty years now, we've been forced to confront (in my part of the world), first the Mount Cashel Orphanage inquiries (and the related TV film The Boys of Saint Vincent), the Duplessis orphans outrage, the ever-spreading and never ending revelations of abuse connected to the Roman Catholic Church, and now, this past year, the horror of the unmarked graves at former residential schools.

I no longer want to read about fictional cruelty when it's all about me for real.

Interesting question. I think that some types of books elicit judgments from different types of readers: "How could you read such a thing for fun??" vs "Wake up! The world isn't all tea cozies and buttered muffins."

I am generally not drawn to books, fiction or non, that rehash real-life cruelties that I have already read about in the news. I will avoid books about the Holocaust, church abuses, animal cruelty, Vietnam war crimes, Abu Ghraib, female mutilation, etc etc.

BUT.

If I think a book or novel can amplify why godawful things happen or expand my understanding of human nature or events in some way, I will consider it. I did get thru Room and We Need to Talk About Kevin. Room was worthwhile. Kevin, I'm not sure about.

Fwiw, I have avoided the "ain't it awful" books cranked out by journalists about the Trump administration. As a former reporter, these things strike me as bad journalism--reconstructed quotes, unnamed sources, loaded adjectives, and pop-psychologizing. All of this type of thing is used by Trumpists to demonstrate media bias, and I would argue that they have a point. Moreover, if you can look at what Trump said/did in public in front of cameras and still think he is America's Savior, no way Jonathan Karl or Bob Woodward are going to persuade you with their backstage hearsay.

Others have told me that these books help clarify events for them.

>28 LolaWalser: that is a wonderful quote.

For myself, I don’t know that I ever express it, but i avoid books with messages about problems in the world unless I have a good sense they are well done. The reason is partially because I have to be selective I can only read so much. But partially because I see in them a variation to tv news filled with car accidents and dramatic murders. Things that are terrible but otherwise uninformative, or worse, misinformative - creating impressions that incorrect and generating fear that reinforces the sense of those impressions. I know in general books do a lot better than tv, and an author’s dedication is much deeper in a book than a tv moment. So I know they are not the same. But i associate them.

Q44

Well, obviously I would avoid books about burning libraries ... cf. Q43!
(Not counting Edmund White's The burning library, which is only metaphorically about burning libraries)

No, seriously, I think I'm with Lola and Kafka: I would reverse the order of the "BUT" in >30 nohrt4me2:.

Great, and worthwhile, books are often about difficult topics, and you need to let them get under your skin in sometimes painful ways to move closer towards understanding how bad things happen in the world, and why, and what we can (or can't) do about it. BUT not all books about difficult topics are great, and some are just pressing the buttons to get press coverage.

And it is quite possible to write a difficult and challenging book about a very banal topic — think of Auto-da-fé, more oppressive in atmosphere and painful to read than a lot of Holocaust books, but in terms of its plot and setting it's just an urban comedy about a professor who is taken in by his housekeeper...

I grew up reading and hearing stories of the Holocaust; the education director of our temple was a survivor and I vividly remember things he told us when I was 7. Ive read them all my life, along with books about poverty, racism, immigration, wars..... . Its imporant to read them to understand how these things happen and how we can prevent it happening again. but at times its so hard to read them when reality is staring into your face. Its not that I cannot look these books in the eye, its that I have seen and read too much. Good example: my rl book group read a burning this month, about a teenager in India who is imprisioned as a terrorist for writing something on FB. I decided not to read it, not because I don't believe this stories happen all the time in the world, but because I can only take so much heart break.and I have come to a point when I need to screen these.

Might be why I have gone back to my teen years and started reading sci fi and fantasy again. They are different enough from real life yet similar in human reactions and experience, without bashing me with a hammer. If that makes any sense

>30 nohrt4me2: f I think a book or novel can amplify why godawful things happen or expand my understanding of human nature or events in some way, I will consider it

Yes, this

Side note: I have been reading about the Salem witch trials (an ancestor was hanged in Salem Village in that debacle) in Peter Hoffer's The Salem Witchcraft Trials. I have been haunted by the story of Dorcas Good, a 4-year-old among the accused who was imprisoned for nearly a year, traumatized by events, and apparently shunned and left to run mad until she died at 16. As horrible as the story is, it begs some kind of historical or fictional explanation for how a community, regretful and penitent about the witch hunts almost immediately after the last witch was hanged, still managed to let this child fall thru the cracks. And why no one much knows about her now. Her birth and death date were not recorded by a community obsessed with record-keeping. The story of the scapegoat, loaded up with sins and driven into the wilderness, comes to mind. There is a novel based on her life that I might order from the library.

>28 LolaWalser: The thing I don't like about Kafka's notion is that it presupposes that only upsetting books can teach us anything.

My sense is that a reading diet of mostly disturbing books about man's inhumanity to man, as we used to say, would keep somebody in a constant state of anxiety and anger.

Having a mostly dark view of people is as bad as insisting that most people are generous and altruistic.

>34 nohrt4me2: Just saw the review of that and oh my, I may need to pass on it.( her name was actually dorothy))

>36 cindydavid4: Yes, they couldn't even get the poor kid's name right.

I am not sure the novel is very accurate. It wants to pile on a lot of other traumas that aren't rooted in any evidence.

Thats the impression I got from the reviews. I realize that since there isn't a lot of evidence, you are free to speculate. But even speculation needs to have a purpose, aside from throwing the kitchen sink of horror into the mix

>35 nohrt4me2: interesting idea from an article I read; Anne Frank says at the end of her diary 'In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart' A lovely sentiment until of course she meets those who are anything but' But the article doesn finish the quote which continues ' I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.'

>35 nohrt4me2:

The thing I don't like about Kafka's notion is that it presupposes that only upsetting books can teach us anything.

My sense is that a reading diet of mostly disturbing books about man's inhumanity to man, as we used to say, would keep somebody in a constant state of anxiety and anger.

See, I don't get that from the quote. Nowhere does Kafka mention we should read about "inhumanity"; all he's saying is that reading books that have a profound effect is more worthwhile than reading those that flatter complacency. Rilke thought beauty was disturbing; I can easily imagine someone having their inner "frozen sea" shattered by the sights in a book of orchids. And so on.

My own reading of Kafka's meaning is that he plumped for reading serious, complex books that engage us like a profound love might. Because it's quite true that if all we needed was to be informed of and disturbed by man's inhumanity, newspapers would suffice. But that's not it--serious, complex books invite something much more difficult... but ultimately rewarding in a way reading about atrocities in the news never can be.

>32 thorold:

BUT not all books about difficult topics are great, and some are just pressing the buttons to get press coverage.

This. In fact, with the modern explosion of representations of violence all across media, it's likely the case that MOST such material is shallow, imitative, purely exploitative and, probably, over time actually numbing our faculties instead of developing them. Unfortunately this seems to be true when it comes to real-life violence too (whatever that effect is called, where saturation of terrible news brings on disaffection and avoidance).

Paradoxically (it may seem to be a paradox), reading, say, Dostoevsky may still wrench something out of the most jaded, hardest, or least intellectual among us because entering into a pact with a writer of that depth is so very different. It's a relationship, it's entering a relationship, where the point isn't to be flattered and reassured, sent down some path we know boringly well, but to take a risk -- risk our good mood, our prejudices, our complacency, our peace of mind, our most cherished beliefs, our image of ourselves and others and the world, especially if we feel whole and completed.

My reason is a lot simpler than most mentioned here - I avoid many books because books affect me strongly, and I don't want to be depressed all the time. If I read cheerful books, I'm cheerful (though some are too fluffy); if I read books where nasty people do nasty things to each other (or worse, to helpless others), that's the lens through which I'll see the world for quite a while. So I choose not to. I'll look at real-world things (news - preferably local where I have a chance to do something about it), but fictional/fictionalized stories about - ok, "man's inhumanity to man" and similar - are beyond me.

>27 SassyLassy: Q 44

"It's too upsetting for me so I'll pass".
. . . . If reading is a steady diet of "comfortable" books, predictable in theme and resolution, what is gained from reading a whole succession of them?

Is this a true dichotomy? If you're not reading upsetting or "deep" books does it mean you're reading predictable books?

I have a lot of unread books that I know are going to be upsetting, but with everything I do in my daily life, I don't have the mental energy to give to them at this point in my life. But that doesn't mean I'm reading predictable, or even comfortable books. My reading is widely varied . . . it's just not upsetting. For the most part.

>40 LolaWalser: Yes, I see what you are saying. I am merely trying to make the point that literature can be worthwhile and admirable for qualities other than stirring up some kind of passionate and transformative response like those elicited by death, suicide, and banishment.

>42 Nickelini: Yes, I am bothered by that either/or dichotomy, too. Dr. Johnson's idea that a book should "teach and delight" has always appealed to me. It's broad enough to accommodate a nice range of literary forms while rejecting the ​outright inane or the purely sensational.

>27 SassyLassy: My first reaction to this question is that it is out there with the questions such as "You seem intelligent, why are you reading sci-fi and not a real book?" and its varietals I had heard through the years.

People have different reasons for reading. Some find escape. Some find it a safe way to explore topics which would be scary or harmful in real life. Some just like the ability to use their imagination. And most people have a mix of these reason plus probably a few more out there.

I find a large swat of contemporary literature unreadable - too close to the real world, trying to get your emotions manipulated to its own ends. Good literature is supposed to do that but you don't elicit support for a main character by killing their dog on page 1 just so you can people make people sorry for the character. And way too may newish authors fall in that mess. There is a way to achieve the same a lot more subtly and without making your reader feel manipulated. But then these seem to make the bestseller lists often so there are people who like that I guess.

I also find the idea that comfortable and "serious topics" are opposites bizarre. Even if a book is predictable in theme and resolution, it still can contain enough to differentiate it enough. A historical novel dealing with a real life queen's documented love life or a king's reign (or vice versa) will always need to stay within its lines. Some genres just have no place to go - so despite knowing where it is going, you don't just call all the novels the same and stop at one if you enjoy the genre. Same with romance novels (within their subgenres), some police procedurals and mysteries and so on. And the same serious issues can be explored inside of their frameworks. Assuming that you cannot gain anything from a succession of them is almost naive and assumes that everyone needs to gain the same things from the same books.

I find that readers who never or rarely read certain genres tend to call the books in these genres formulaic or worse. While there are some that may be, discarding a whole genre always talks more about the person doing it than the genre (including my early 20s self who had such a disdain for romance novels after reading a few hundred of them in the previous years).

And people have different needs and desires at different times. Some days you need something new, sometimes you just need a place to escape to; some days you can handle human cruelty, some days you cannot. Not wanting to always deal with upsetting books is not a bug, it is a feature - it shows that you know what you can handle at that specific time. So is the ability to admit that you are in a different mental space and let a book wait for you to get back to it as opposed to push through and hate it.

And if you work a high stress job (or have other stresses in your life), you are the only one who knows what you need to escape for a bit - sometimes it is real monsters, sometimes it is imaginary ones and sometimes it is bunnies and rainbows. And if you never want to read an upsetting novel? You find the genre who give you what you need. I have a friend back home who refuses to read a book if she is not sure that there is a happy end in it. It's her way to cope with the world being what it is.

>42 Nickelini: I wondered that myself; too often, esp in media, we are told its either this or that, the far ends of any issue that most people don't fit with. Boooks as well as life are not black and white but complex patterns of gray along with stripes of colors

>44 AnnieMod: hee i might be somewhat like your friend. If Im at all worried about the ending, I go and look. Don't mind spoilers, just want to see, wheter happy sad or inbetween, it ends the way it should based on the story itself.

I have been lurking about in this discussion. I tend to agree with >41 jjmcgaffey:. I am highly affected by some issues and vividly imagine them, to the point that they prey on my mind and prevent me from sleeping at night. I avoid horror or terrifying movies for the same reason--they become too real to me. Not that the books I read do not include or address societal issues like homelessness, spouse abuse, alcoholism, or family issues. I just do not need to know all the details.

>46 cindydavid4: I also read the endings of novels and do not mind spoilers.

>47 LadyoftheLodge: I am highly affected by some issues and vividly imagine them, to the point that they prey on my mind and prevent me from sleeping at night. I avoid horror or terrifying movies for the same reason--they become too real to me.

and like jim, I get way too depressed, esp if I can't get the vision out of my head. I have a very good imagination and unfortunatley no editor

>48 cindydavid4: That is a good way to put it for me as well. I generally imagine things as far worse than they actually are.

>48 cindydavid4: You know, movies don't bother me. I can watch a horror movie and go to bed and will sleep like a baby. Books on the other hand prey on me :)

I suspect it has something to do with "seeing it" vs "imagining it". But it is still weird.

>28 LolaWalser: Thank-you, Thank-you, Thank-you.

I think it is necessary to read with the spirit of Kafka, even if only occasionally, to shake ourselves out of our self imposed cocoons. As you say, ...what is important is knowing that reading can be important, that it can do things to us which change us and grow us. I regard this with awe and respect...

>30 nohrt4me2: If I think a book or novel can amplify why godawful things happen or expand my understanding of human nature or events in some way, I will consider it.
This to me is one of the many roles of books, be they fiction or nonfiction, to elaborate and explore life beyond the parameters of news media and journalism.

>35 nohrt4me2: Having a mostly dark view of people is as bad as insisting that most people are generous and altruistic
I don't think that books which present serious problems necessarily lead to the conclusion that people are "bad". They can instead lead "generous and altruistic" readers to go out and do something to correct a particular problem. A couple of nineteenth century examples would be Black Beauty (animal cruelty) and The Water Babies (child labour)

As >32 thorold: says Great, and worthwhile, books are often about difficult topics, and you need to let them get under your skin in sometimes painful ways to move closer towards understanding how bad things happen in the world, and why, and what we can (or can't) do about it.

>42 Nickelini: >43 nohrt4me2: >44 AnnieMod: There wasn't a dichotomy intended in this question. There are so many other kinds of books we all read that don't fit either category, including those "teach and delight" books the good doctor mentions.

>44 AnnieMod: people have different needs and desires at different times. Some days you need something new, sometimes you just need a place to escape to; some days you can handle human cruelty, some days you cannot. Not wanting to always deal with upsetting books is not a bug, it is a feature - it shows that you know what you can handle at that specific time. So is the ability to admit that you are in a different mental space and let a book wait for you to get back to it as

Thoughtful response on why we read and need variety

>51 SassyLassy: I don't think that books which present serious problems necessarily lead to the conclusion that people are "bad".

Not the conclusion I intended to convey at all.

Q44: Avoidance

Interesting question. I don’t mind books on uncomfortable or difficult subjects. I don’t really gravitate toward “escapist” reading anyway, and sometimes a book that challenges me emotionally, ethically, etc. is what I need to get out of my head or away from the moment. And sometimes it just feels—I guess not “good,” but appropriate, or helpful—to be immersed in a confrontational topic. I find that to read something is to engage with it and encompass it in some way, even (sometimes especially) if it’s filtered through an author’s sensibility, and sometimes that’s necessary to keep me feeling less removed from a subject. I don’t like feeling removed—I’d rather walk through than walk around, mostly.

That said, there’s a difference between art, or good reporting, and exploitation. And if something smells of that I tend to stay away. Not always easy to tell going in, but good reviews/reputable authors are indications, and then sometimes you just have to take a chance.

I also give myself a few hard no’s. I still don’t want to read about 9/11—if it’s part of the story, OK, but I haven’t wanted to pick up any of the nonfiction books that have come out in the past couple of years where it’s front and center. I don’t really like the term “triggering,” but yeah… I guess it is. I also can’t deal with animal cruelty or even animals in distress if it’s detailed. Also, obviously (I would hope), child abuse, but that seems to be used less gratuitously than animals being hurt, which people employ as an allegorical or storytelling device way too often for my taste (notable exception: A Little Life, which I finished but jeez, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so manipulated by a novel, for a lot of reasons beside the child abuse, and in the end it was a pretty rotten reading experience). I just have a huge soft spot for animals—that’s my mushy place so I respect it.

stayed awake too late, reading Cuckoo land, but not in the way you might think. The very first section deals with a hostage situation with children involved and possible bomb. I glanced through the various chapters to see what happens. Ok, I can breath easy, Ill read the rest of it now.

A gentler question:


image from science how stuff works

QUESTION 45: Seasons

At my book club last week, we were deciding next year's list. Someone said she didn't want to read Dostoyevsky in winter. I thought to myself, winter is the best time to read the Russians. Two readers of the same author, two different views of the season for him.

Do certain books or authors fit better at different times of year than others for you? If so, why do you think this is?
Do seasons actually mean anything to you?

>55 SassyLassy: Q 45

I very much enjoy being a seasonal reader, but for me it's more of a book-by-book basis and not so much by author. I agree that Russians are good winter reads, as are Nordic writers. I tend to read more Italian books in summer.

Not...really? I recall reading a book with characters caught in the snow, and shivering - in 90+F heat. I don't think reading warm books fools me in winter, though. I don't think I'd choose to read a winter odyssey in winter, though the winters here are quite mild (rain and chilly rather than snow and cold).

I think we had similar questions before. I read what I want and when I want season doesn't matter to me re picks of books

Maybe it's all about mood building. I love to read something that connects to what I'm experiencing. Perhaps other readers don't care about that because they can do fabulous world building in their heads wherever they are . . . so sitting at a bus stop in a busy city on a hot summer day while reading about trekking across a dark and windy moor might not be a problem. And it wouldn't be for me either, I can do that too. But I'd just have more fun reading that book curled up in my favourite chair with my fire crackling and candles flickering on a November night when the rain is beating against my window.

I have to say that reading about a really cold place when we are having a heat wave, or a steamy hot place during a cold snap, can also be extremely satisfying.

I don't really go down the path of reading with the seasons. It's more that I'm doing certain things at different points in the year, or are particularly busy, and so that affects my choices more than the seasons themselves. For instance, if it's the summer and (pre-COVID) I'm on holiday, then I'll not choose a heavy read.

I'm quite happy to read about snow in summer or hot destinations in winter, though. Isn't that the point of reading - escapism?

I don't read about the Arctic in winter and birdies in spring. But my moods and concentration levels do vary by season, and that affects reading choices.

I made the mistake of reading Faulkner one hot summer when the heat was oppressive and we had no a/c. I felt like the Sartorises were more real than my own family for weeks.

Christmastime gives me reverbs of bad childhood experiences, so I try to find something as un-Christmaslike as possible. A long Stephen King book of horrors usually works good for Xmas.

My energy and concentration levels are high in autumn, so if I read nonfiction, it's then.

Spring in Michigan is an ugly, unpredictable mess. You are either shoveling frozen slush or picking up sticks in the yard from weekly wind storms. A funny book can sometimes help.

>55 SassyLassy: Q45

Not because of the seasons but it used to depend on my work cycle/vacations - a lot of travel (for business or vacation) meant a lot of extra reading time. But it also meant reading either what I am willing to carry or on the kindle so... it was getting complicated sometimes.

Plus the only seasons I have these days are summer and Arizona summer (and the 2 weeks of "hey, it's cold" we have early in a year. :)

I tend to fall into less serious books towards the end of the year but that is again work related and not seasonal.

Q45: Seasons
My reading doesn't really change from season to season, and I don't think either my free time or my attention span fluctuate depending on time of year. I always say I'm going to read cold weather books in the summer (hot weather books in the winter come to mind less often, for whatever reason)—I like the idea of reading all those great polar exploration books in August, and once in a while I do. But mostly my reading is propelled by other factors, mainly work and whims.

Q45:

I was just about to start a boring post saying that I agree with everyone else, and what I read depends more on what I happen to be doing than on the time of year, but then I realised that ten minutes ago I was putting together a playlist for the next couple of hours, and looking out at the grey November skies I decided to add Albéniz’s Iberia suite for a bit of musical sunshine. So there must be at least something in the notion of seasonal moods for consuming culture…

In an ideal world, I’m sure I would be reading gloriously immersive, long nineteenth century novels by the fireplace in winter (Dostoevsky? Why not?), P G Wodehouse in spring, adventurous foreign fiction in summer, and Barbara Pym/Elizabeth Taylor/Anita Brookner in autumn.

But life’s not quite that simple, and there’s stuff that has to be fitted in at odd times for book-club, or when I have time to get it from the library, or when I’m away from home and using the e-reader. Poetry and non-fiction has to be fitted in somewhere. Books provoke other books. There are days when I’m sitting at home with a computer and a tea-kettle within easy reach and my attention span goes down to about ten minutes, and other days when I’m on a train or in a garden somewhere and can read undisturbed for hours. Also, I don’t actually have a fireplace…

The seasons do not really affect my reading, although I tend to have favorite holiday stories that I read in November and December. I sometimes read Christmas books at other times of the year though.

My reading choices pretty much go along with the Category Challenges and also what I have from NetGalley. However, one book sometimes leads to another in the same mood or series, and off we go!

I also like to read cozy, friendly books when the weather is windy and rainy or snowy. Yep, I do have a fireplace and comfortable reading chairs, plus two of my cats are always ready to read with me. (Their latest choice, which they flipped off the shelf, is my collector's edition, beautifully bound The Man in the Iron Mask.)

>55 SassyLassy:

I'd like to think that I can concentrate on anything anytime, but I find I do get "seasonally" affected, at least somewhat. Reading about snowbound or desert settings in extremely opposite weather doesn't appeal.

I think there is something to the Japanese sense that seasons invite appropriate themes--at least in a limited fashion, in certain types of literature, as in haiku. It links us mentally to our surroundings, which, if you recall the role that observation of nature plays in this poetry, helps to situate us too as part of nature and time's flow.

>66 LolaWalser: "Reading about snowbound or desert settings in extremely opposite weather doesn't appeal."

I thought so when I lived in a place with real seasons. Now I can read about a blizzard while it is 120+ degrees outside (that's 49+ Celsius for the normal world) :)

>67 AnnieMod:

Ha, yes, all depends on the baseline. And we're all headed to where you're at!

Q45 I don't think seasons really affect my reading. I'm terribly attracted to books set in colder places and it's year round. There was a time—when I first created the Reading Globally group—that I was heavily reading African authors, but that was year round also.

I think I can understand that someone might not wish to read Dostoevsky in winter; I read the Russians before LibraryThing in the 1990s ....

Avaland suggested some great follow-ups to Question 45



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QUESTION 46: If not seasons then...?

What is that does motivate your reading? Is it external things like educational requirements, that book club meeting, completing a challenge, or even work?

Is it more internal things like mood, completist tendencies, what's happening outside the window, binge reading a series, you saw the film or play, or being the first on the block to read a given title?

Any and all. I don't need motivation to read. I choose books based on recommendations, covers, interests and/or book groups.

I've never tried to parse this but:

I have a loose mental list of works I think I should read because of my lit background. I finished with Dickens this year. Not to say I read all of Dickens, but enough to feel finished with him.

I read some books my friends rec so we can talk about them, assuming said friend has a track record of rec'ing good books.

I read book reviews in the newspaper and on here and put titles of dystopians, domestic thrillers, and a couple other genres in a wish list. These preferred genres have changed over time.

I read books by writers who have been reliably entertaining.

I used to reread more books than I do now, but old favorites do show up in the turnstile sometimes. Now listening to George Gissing's The Odd Women.

What I really miss is browsing the stacks at a library. I used to find a lot of books that way until my mid-30s.

I have a loose list of authors on my mental sh*t list. I won't read books by them because my first encounter with them was inane or objectionable. If someone tells me, "Oh, Author X is great! He's a lot like Hated Author," Author X goes on the sh*t list. Probably not fair, but life is short and full of enough disappointments as it is.

>72 nohrt4me2: What I really miss is browsing the stacks at a library. I used to find a lot of books that way until my mid-30s.

A whole other topic, but why did you stop doing this if it's something you love to do?

If she's like me, its because the libraries were closed during the pandemic, and they still have kinda strange hours

>74 cindydavid4:
Oh, I didn't think of that. Our libraries have been open except for spring-summer 2020. That seems so long ago.

QUESTION 46: If not seasons then...?

What is that does motivate your reading? Is it external things like educational requirements, that book club meeting, completing a challenge, or even work?

Is it more internal things like mood, completist tendencies, what's happening outside the window, binge reading a series, you saw the film or play, or being the first on the block to read a given title?

Not external things. I have a weird mental block against reading stuff that I _have_ to read (possibly because there were so few assigned books in high school/college that I actually enjoyed reading. Two, possibly three, out of...dozens). I have tried to join a book club several times, and I don't think I finished the book ever except the time I'd already read it and knew I enjoyed it. I tried TIOLI too and that wasn't awful because I could read what I wanted and fit it into the challenges - but it still felt mostly like work rather than something enjoyable. Ditto various book bingos.

Internal, yes. The first four, plus interesting reviews (mostly in the newspaper, rather than here - I seldom look at reviews on LT until I'm writing mine). There are a good many books where it's "Ooh, new one by {author}! Mine!" Then completing series, reading everything by a new author I've found - oh, that's one way LT gets me books, I do get hit by book bullets in threads I follow. I've picked up two new authors recently that way and am almost finished reading everything they've written (that I can find). The new book shelf at the library is another source. But I do tend to collect books as soon as they look interesting, and then get around to reading them much, much later (or, why one of my yearly goals is to read paper books in my house for over a year that have never been read (BOMBs, Books Off My Bookshelf). I'm failing at my goal again this year, but at least I got some read). I also do quite a bit of rereading, when something triggers a memory of a line or scene from a book - if the scene is still playing out in my head when I finish the book I'm on, I'm likely to go reread the book (or series!) it came from.

Q46: If not seasons then...?

All kinds of things, I suppose…

There are obvious things like the book-club — but that’s four or five books a year at most. And there’s always the TBR pile, bringing to my attention books that I thought were interesting some time ago but haven’t got around to yet.

There are topics of interest suggested externally, things like the Reading Globally quarterly themes, that I sometimes get quite deeply into, sometimes not.

There are topics of interest prompted by other things in my life — by books, by conversations I have, places I visit, films I see: something makes me aware that I don’t know as much as I would like to about Milton or the Spanish empire or eighteenth century Germany, or that I’ve never read anything by writer X who was a good friend of writer Y whose biography I’ve been reading, and I go off down a rabbit hole of books that lead to other books, or don’t, and sometimes turn into quite a different topic in the process.

There are chance things that catch my eye in the library or in bookshops — less of that over the last couple of years than usual, because they weren’t always open, but I’ve tried to keep open the random factor as far as possible. When I find a book I’m looking for on ABE Books, I make a point of pressing the “other books from this seller” button, and that’s turned up quite a few things I didn’t know I needed in my life, like that bumper-pack of East German English-language paperbacks…

One of the things the library is particularly good for is technical books from other people’s fields. You see a book on the shelf about the technology of something like lifts, or clocks, or organs (musical), and you realise that you’ve never had more than a vague idea of how they really work…

If I'm being very good I follow where my heart leads me.

>73 Nickelini: I live in a rural area and would have to drive 30 miles to find a library with stacks to browse. Pandemic and my own health make that impossible.

Q46: What steers my reading:

Exploration: When I joined LT (15 years ago) I was into reading fiction from Africa, so I continued that, but I tend to glom on to a subject and read in it until I'm satiated, whether it's two or ten books later. This can lead to "completest tendencies" (see below)

Other LTers: Over the 15 years I've been on LT, so many people have affected my reading (and some influenced our travel!) It was so exciting to be talking books with people who came from different countries, cultural backgrounds, and experiences...

Knowledge/Education: Akin to exploration, isn't it? Here I suppose I am talking more about intentional nonfiction.

Clarity/Understanding: What just happened? How? Why? Might be a personal issue, or something, say, national.

Comfort: Reading is generally a comfort for me, but here I'm talking about picking up a crime novel because you know it will reliably resolve at the end. Here I immediately think of the 80s when I had three small children during the day (I worked nights, no daycare in those days) and while that late afternoon "witching hour" a Dorothy Sayers or PD James was my drug of choice. Maybe I should add a "Desperation" category for when it's been too long....

Completest tendencies: I've tried to curb this, but when I take up an author/book, if I am smitten, I tend to want to read everything they have written. Example: I'm reading now a Mia Couto novel, and have just two small short fiction collections to be caught up on his work.

Serendipity: Random acts of literary discovery (as also mentioned by others above).

Fear of No Books: Somewhere, deep down, in a corner of my soul....

>72 nohrt4me2: "my mental sh*t list" Now that is an author list I'd like to see! (sounds like another good idea for a question). I don't keep a list in my head, but I know them when I see them.

>80 avaland: Everybody has a sh*t list, if only in the form of recoil when you see their names on a shelf.

All I'll say about mine is that Philip Roth has bounced on and off it for years. The Human Stain is heavy-handed and problematic in its treatment of racial issues, but I found it really worthwhile despite the flaws, and enough to push Roth off the s-list for good.

Looking forward to The Plot Against America over the holidays.

>78 tonikat: maybe i should have said more -- it's what is speaking to me, connecting. There is loads I should read or want to, but the stuff that speaks to me in that way is the thing now. Maybe a sense of warmth or excitement. Maybe also to be sure things i should try as they are large gaps, but am prone to leave aside what then does not get me going.

>82 tonikat: I get that!

>81 nohrt4me2: I think we've had this discussion before: I'd have to have a think...

>72 nohrt4me2:

Broadly speaking, my expansive shit list encompasses authors whose name is larger than, and above, the title as well as almost all paperbacks where the title is embossed in gold, especially if the typeface is decorative. Yes, I do judge books by their covers.

>70 SassyLassy: Q46

Hm... it's complicated.

It usually comes down to mood - which is often related to work and what is going on in my life. I tend to be a completist - but outside of some very weird moments I rarely binge-read a series or an author - I tend to alternate.

I've never been a part of a book club or any other group that required me to read a certain book for a certain time (outside of school and a few read-alongs here in LT). I tend to get carried away with challenges though - which usually ends up with me being frustrated and annoyed and I end up dropping everything and retreating into safe spaces (speculative fiction and thrillers/mysteries).

At the end of the day, it can be anything. A cover I saw. A comment here in LT. A random comment about a book on social media. Something I picked up while working on my other bookish projects. Amazon's weird recommendations. I can stay on the same genre/author/series for weeks and then go through 10 different genres in as many days.

>85 librorumamans: Haha! I get it, but I blame the publishers for those "blockbuster" covers, not the authors. Unless it's Dan Brown.

Q46
As in >71 cindydavid4:, I do not need motivation to read. I read whatever catches my fancy at the time, although I have my favorite genres. Often it involves a "rabbit trail" from another book I finished, or wanting to read more by a specific author. I do not like reading books that I "have to" read, even though I belong to a book group (sometimes I do not finish the books though). Sometimes I get interested in a certain genre or author or topic and read in that area for awhile. I do not usually read "best sellers," although I sometimes pick them up when they are not "best sellers" any more. I also do reviews for NetGalley, but I only request books I really want to read and plan to review. The LT Category Challenges also help me find books I want to read to fit the categories.

I really do best with structure. Seasons simply aren’t predictable enough in the sense that I always seem to get the timing wrong in Houston, or worry i do. So I prefer hard dates.

Jan 1 is a big date for me because I have been doing yearly themes.

And i plan out months. It’s been working for a while now.

And i like online group reads with specific discussion dates (and slow paces).

I don’t handle vagaries well

I have trouble adjusting to new mindsets (which is why i like themes)

>88 LadyoftheLodge: Often it involves a "rabbit trail" from another book I finished, or wanting to read more by a specific author.

oh Ive been down that rabbit hole forever- read a something that takes place in ireland, then learn more about ireland,then look at travel writing, then buy a guide to plan a trip. and on and on and on

>90 cindydavid4: We think alike! I read a book about an Amish quilt store, so then I read more about quilting and patterns, and the Amish culture and faith, then looking for authors who are Amish, next I found a book about Amish people set in Hawaii, so I look for a book about Hawaiian quilt patterns, then a book about Hawaii, and Pearl Harbor, and off it goes!

Completist tendencies of course.

Q46: What drives my reading

Oh, all sorts of things. I read a lot of book related content—reviews, essays, articles, author features, podcasts, plus there are always reviews and conversations on this site, and ongoing incidental book talk with most of my friends. All of those get me excited about stuff, and I'll mentally nudge books up or down the pile depending on what catches my interest.

I pick up a lot of galleys, now exclusively online but I used to get print ARCs at work and conferences, and I'm always stoked for those to varying degrees—especially if it's something I've been waiting to get hold of.

I have a pile on my desk of books I get as gifts, and those get priority too—if a friend of mine thinks they're something I'd want to read, I respect their judgment 100%. I find the folks who don't really know what I like stay away from giving me books, and the ones who do have unerring good taste.

Sometimes I'm on a book selection project for work, or need to do some background reading for an interview or article, so there's the work-related factor—I also review books for LJ, so that's another. And I'm often reading books for my website Bloom in preparation for interviewing an author or writing an essay or review.

There are also topics I'm interested in that I'll pick up books about specifically, depending on what my magpie brain deems interesting at the moment. That includes people, and I'm always a sucker for correspondence collections and sketchbooks.

Oh, and book club books.

So basically: everything.

>91 LadyoftheLodge: I drove my professor crazy; I was her research assistant and she'd send me off to the library to find an article. half hour later, I had it, with three others I was reading as well. Fortunatly she was patient but I did have to put a stop to it, at least with her. What I did on my own time was fine

image from Wikipedia

QUESTION 47: Blurbs

One of the admittedly small things that can prompt us to select a given book is the blurb on the back. Do you read these?

What words in a blurb are guaranteed to make you drop that book instantly?

What words might work to get you to read it?

How about writing a blurb here for a well known book. You can name the book, or we can have some fun trying to guess the title from your writeup.

Q47 there was a time, yes. But I learned not to trust them a long time ago, evolving from outright offense (how dare they manipulate for marketing - that kind a like of thing) to indifference. But I still read them and the quotes by other authors I find curious (which are also often disappointing).

Q47

There was a time — in the '70s? the '80s? — when the Cleveland Plain Dealer appeared to say something positive about any title that came its way. Thus, if publishers couldn't do any better, they would blurb from the Dealer, and I came to view its praises as negative indicators.

Q47 Blurbs:

This Answer will change the way you see Avid Questions forever
        — South-Western Goldfish Collectors' Monthly

I do look at blurbs. Even badly-produced ones usually give you some idea of what the book is about and what sort of readers it might be aimed at. But I don't often use it as sole indication that a book might or might not be what I'm looking for.

Some of these things might be counter-indications for reading the book:
— "Now a major motion picture" (why are books never made into minor motion pictures?)
— "Miniseries" (OK, so maybe some are)
— "... as told to..." (ghostwriter alert!)
— "Author of the bestselling..." (so this one isn't selling too well, then?)
— Quotes that are obviously about the author's earlier work, especially if they are from dead people — this is OK for a review copy, but not for a mainstream paperback where reviews have presumably appeared already
— Quotes suggesting that the work is (almost) as good as a well-known book by another author, especially a current one.
— Coded references to controversial books that are meant to suggest illicit content of some kind without worrying the ill-informed (not so common nowadays, but time was when every book containing a sex-scene mentioned Frank Harris or Lady Chatterley on the back cover, and every gay-themed book dropped the name of Truman Capote)
— Suspiciously short quotes that look as though they might have been taken out of context
— Quotes from people I have never heard of, or from obscure newspapers (cf. >97 librorumamans:); quotes from famous people I wouldn't expect to be good judges of books
— "This book will change your life" — when used without obvious irony
— "Shortlisted for..." — it obviously didn't win then
— "They said it couldn't be told" (in fact, any reference to unspecified "they" is doubt-inspiring)

Lesser counter-indications (the adjectives of doom). Not necessarily bad in themselves, but a worrying sign if they appear unsupported by any meaningful context, particularly if followed by excavation marks:
— appetising, bawdy, controversial, cynical, glittering, hilarious, irrepressible, knowledgeable, masterly, outstanding, raunchy, sexy, stimulating, tormented, unexpurgated, ...

>98 thorold: hah! Yep, ditto this. Cant add a thing!

Q47 BLURBS

Yes, I do read the back of books OR the inner flaps; or if shopping online, the "virtual" flaps. I read them knowing full well it's meant to help sell the book. I suppose at this point in my life I have a somewhat complicated interior radar for bullsh*t and hype; and one has to read between it.

Take a recent book by a new author bought online as an example: We Know You Remember: A Novel by by Tove Alsterdal. I like to read crime novels (it's sort of a palate-cleansing thing between other books), but I'm picky. The blurb noted the book was set in a more rural setting in Sweden, which interested me; it was allegedly "complex", and it also was the start of a series. And there was a note that her first book published was an award-winner (it was a decent read, enough so that I ordered her previous book. However, I'm not booking a vacation there anytime soon!)

I definitely think the smaller, independent publishers are much better with blurb content than the big houses. I like to shop from their online catalogs :-)

I think I avoid having to choose/shop by blurbs by being prone to author jags....if I like an author, fiction or non, I tend to read more of their books (without consulting the blurbs).

I find it much harder to chose poetry by blurbs...I must sample the poetry first! (unless it is a familiar poet).

Short story collections chosen tend to be by familiar authors, but I have picked up a few new authors from information on the outside of the book/or online blurb .

Q 47 Blurbs

I don't generally even look at the blurbs, because I've always assumed that they are by and large transactional in some way (favor for favor, a thing the publisher encourages its authors to do for one another in exchange for more attention, etc.) To me, they feel much the same as celebrity endorsements of products - bought an paid for, and thus entirely meaningless.

I do make exceptions for authors that am familiar with and really like, and whose integrity I trust. For instance, I saw a positive quote from Neil Gaiman on the cover of Crossings by Alex Landragin at a bookstore recently, and that was enough for me to look at the book's summary. The summary, in combination with Gaiman's endorsement, was enough to make me record the title so that I can order it from the library. (Although I haven't actually done that yet. I plan to order it from the library once I finish the stack that's already overdue.)

Q 47

What's your definition of a blurb?

I initially thought you meant the one or two paragraph marketing description of the book on the back cover, or inside cover flaps. People here though seem to be talking about the short flashy phrases (not even sentences usually) from other authors, celebrities, or media. Those are two distinct things.

>103 Nickelini: I was thinking of the things on the back cover that you look at idly in the book store, and then possibly move on to the inside cover flaps, so in a sense, both.

Oxford Languages gives it as a noun and verb:

noun: a short description of a book, movie, or other product written for promotional purposes and appearing on the cover of a book or in an advertisement.

verb: to write or contribute a blurb for (a book, movie, or other product).
"this is the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books"
Not sure here about their use of the noun form in the definition of the verb form, but they are the lexicographers!

>104 SassyLassy: Both Wikipedia and the OED cite that image you posted (Are you a bromide) as the first use of the word, but the text makes it look as though it was an existing word that Burgess expected his readers to recognise, so I'd have thought it most likely that it was already in informal use in the trade.

E S Turner's Shocking history of advertising doesn't mention blurbs, as such, but it does point out that publishers have been promoting new books in the press since at least the 1830s. Apparently the first full-page advert in the Times was for a book. Interestingly, he also mentions that during the days of the advertising tax in England (up to the late 1840s), favourable reviews were treated by the tax office as disguised advertising and papers had to cough up the 1/6d fee for them. Of course, lots of mass-market books in the 19th century and up to quite recently had pages and pages of adverts in them, not always just for that publisher's books either. Technical books often had adverts for products used in that field, as trade journals still do.

Interesting that all the OED citations (up to about 1950) seem to refer to the publisher's marketing description/synopsis, so maybe the use to refer to endorsements or excerpts from reviews is a more recent development.

I think it's pretty standard practice to base a definition of a derived form on the original form.

>98 thorold: Hahaha! Thanks for today's laugh.

I don't see many blurbs any more because I read e-books or books from the liberry.

But a fun way to kill an hour waiting for somebody in a mall is to find a bookstore with a romance section and read the blurbs on the bodice ripper covers. Torrid steamy untamed lust warrior tycoon ravishing yearning headstrong haughty hot-blooded virgin bride

Aside: Anyone ever read Gore Vidal's Duluth in which fictional romance writer Rosemary Cline Cantor generates historical romance bestsellers by computer? Pretty funny.

I read blurbs to check out the people who are doing the blurbing, not their words—which are, let's face it, mostly either boilerplate or logrolling (and sure, sometimes genuine). But I like to see who's offering their testimonial, since it gives me an idea of the book's general vibe: is it more on the literary than mass market side? More aligned with an indie ethos even if it's coming out of a big publisher or an imprint thereof? Blurbed by an author I adore and would follow anywhere, or by one I think is a hack? Is it a genre I don't care for dressed up as something else? You can parse a lot of info from who blurbs what, but not necessarily from what they say.

It's a bit similar to looking at the LT recommendations on a book's page—I'm not trying to find one-to-one correlations but more of a general zeitgeist if a book is an unknown quantity.

I ignore blurbs by people and newspapers and the like - they are pre-selected to make the book look good and a waste of space if you ask me. And occasionally, they can be spoilery - which is even worse.

I tend to read the excerpt/summary/whatever on the back cover (internal flaps for most hardcovers). Although that can be misleading and occasionally even more spoilery - but no more than Amazon's listing or a library description (they are often the same thing really) so... it is what it is.

Same issue I have with "introductions" full of spoilers and insights about the text you are about to read....

Q 47 Blurbs

I scan them on books I pick up to see who is writing them - if it's an author I know and respect, I'm more likely to take a look inside at the publisher's synopsis. But I also keep in my that what I like to read and what another person likes aren't necessarily the same thing.

And I totally agree with >100 avaland:, I have to sample poetry before I buy it.

Q47 Blurbs

a worrying sign if they appear unsupported by any meaningful context, particularly if followed by excavation marks:
— appetizing, bawdy, controversial, cynical, glittering, hilarious, irrepressible, knowledgeable, masterly, outstanding, raunchy, sexy, stimulating, tormented, unexpurgated, ...

Wait, I need to pick myself up off the floor and dry my eyes so I can type...

I most often read blurbs when I am filling out the Common Knowledge data in LT. Blurbers is one of the fields. The blurbers I most listen to are those warbling on CR.

>98 thorold: and >110 labfs39: That just about says it all!

Adjectives that cause me to drop a book immediately are 'Heartrending', 'Heartwarming', or just about anything else with heart in it. I'm not heartless, I just don't like obviously manipulative books! Actually, maybe 'heartless' would work in a blurb for me. 'Cosy' is another word that just doesn't work for me.

I also avoid books with a readers' guide.

Like >107 lisapeet:, I'm always interested to see just who is doing the blurbing

>111 SassyLassy: Yah, "cozy/cosy." Ugh. It feels like I'm a nursing home resident being talked down to. "Don't we look cozy and comfy in our fluffy new bathrobe, honey?"

>111 SassyLassy: Adjectives that cause me to drop a book immediately are 'Heartrending', 'Heartwarming', or just about anything else with heart in it. I'm not heartless, I just don't like obviously manipulative books! Actually, maybe 'heartless' would work in a blurb for me. 'Cosy' is another word that just doesn't work for me.

yep. those usually imply too much saccarine which i cannot stand.

>111 SassyLassy: also avoid books with a readers' guide.

oh you mean those questions that were as sorry as any HS lit class? Was very briefly in a book group that was reading a book of interest to me. They used the readers guide, everyone taking turns giving a short sentence answer to each one. I tried to start up an actual discussion and was told to leave. And in general,there is nothing in those questions that any reader needs to be able to think about the book

I do however enjoy author interviews and or author notes, esp in Historic Fiction

sassy lassy please check your pm.

Lately I won't touch anything with the word "trauma" in the blurb unless it has something else that attracts me. I don't mind trauma in what I read but I don't need to read anything with that as its star quality.

The thing about readers' guides is that sometimes publishers require them as a selling point, so that wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me. Though I'm also the person who avoids books labeled as "women's fiction," even though I'm sure that's also just a tacked-on selling point.

>115 lisapeet: Yeah, I don't have troubles with reader guides - if they help someone, more power to them; I just ignore them (they can be very spoilery if you read them before you read the book).

>115 lisapeet: >116 AnnieMod: I’ve just been reading through the Adrian Mole books, and five of the eight I read were ebooks with the exact same interviews, chronologies and biographical notes in the back. It was moderately interesting the first time, and didn’t seem do any harm, except for messing up the ebook equivalent of “tell-tale thinning of the pages” — the book suddenly stops with the counter still on 80%.

>117 thorold: The 2021 ebooks of the Butler's Patternmaster series are like that (except that it is photos and not interviews). I suspect we will see that more and more in reissued series - no paper considerations to stop them so they can just use that everywhere.

>117 thorold: Signet Shakespeare - which I like a lot overall - has the same 50-ish page introduction to Shakespeare for every volume.

I was reading the prologue to Don Quixote and thought about this thread (this question), sort of a C16th version of the problem, where to get some sonnets from for the first pages . . .

Rock Texture Book: image from Suze Woolf fine art - silk screen images, cover is made of veneer brick

QUESTION 48: Tactile Books

We give toddlers and small children books with textures and even scents, so why not adults? What books might benefit from such treatment: Cookbooks, travel books, manuals, Zola's Nana?

How would you tackle creating such a book?

This may not be quite what you have in mind.

My recipe starts with abandoning photo-offset printing and photo typesetting. So, Monotype or hand-set text printed by letterpress on high-quality paper, bound, at a minimum in cloth. That provides all sorts of textures, particularly the bite of the type into the page. And, if well designed, it's a joy to look at.

This is what you used to get if you bought first printings from, for example, Oxford or Cambridge presses.

If you want to go further than that, consider Bruce Rogers' 1932 edition of T. E. Lawrence's translation of The Odyssey for which Rogers used an historic recipe that produced an intensely black ink with a distinct and pleasant peppery odour.

Blumenthal writes in his book on Rogers: "I had the privilege of arranging an exhibition, 'Art of the Printed Book: 1455-1955,' for the Pierpont Morgan Library . I believe that the Bruce Rogers Odyssey is indisputably among the most beautiful books ever produced, including the widely acclaimed, illustrated Hyperotomachia Poliphili of Aldus Manutius, issued in 1499."

Now that's a feast for the senses!

There was an epistolary novel awhile back with the letters inserted in envelopes you had to open and read. It seemed kind of distracting and gimmicky to me. Like John Waters's scratch and sniff movie cards.

>122 librorumamans: It's what's in the responder's mind that matters!

The description intrigued me, so I went looking for it after reading your answer and found this



A grey shaded paper was made by hand, with a Greek galley used as the watermark. Even a special ink, made with balsam, was used and gave the volumes a distinct, spicy fragrance. Rogers used his signature typeface, Centaur, for the printing, and used 26 small classic roundels in black, set on gold leaf, for the illustrations, which were drawn by Rogers from designs on ancient Greek vases. - from https://davidson.libguides.com/c.php?g=1090488&p=7965581

I also found this on the Bonhams website:

The Odyssey of Homer, LIMITED TO 530 COPIES, translated by T.E. Lawrence, 26 roundels depicting Homeric figures printed in black and gold, very slight offsetting, contemporary black morocco, t.e.g., slightly rubbed at head and foot of spine O'Brien A141, 4to (290 x 195mm.), Emery Walker, Wilfred Merton and Bruce Rogers, 1932
Footnotes
"I believe the Bruce Rogers Odyssey is indisputably amongst the most beautiful books ever produced. It is difficult to describe a work of genius. In the Odyssey without tricks or accessory decoration, with a classic austerity akin to the timeless proportions of the Parthenon, with only type and paper and ink, with consummate skill, Rogers created a masterpiece" (Blumenthal, Bruce Rogers: A Life in Letters, 1987).

Selling price in 2015 - £1,375 including buyer's premium

>123 nohrt4me2: Would that be Griffin and Sabine?

>124 SassyLassy: No idea of the title. Just remember hearing about it and thinking I wouldn't like it.

>48 cindydavid4: I'm with Jean, I'd find such things "distracting and gimmicky"...although perhaps I might be more receptive if it were a children's book.

>123 nohrt4me2: the jolly postman was one I used all of the time at school. Postman goes delivering letters (which are in the handy envelopes) to the witch, the big bad wolf, the three bears, cinderella, etc. Kids got a kick out of them and adults enjoyed the humor that went over the kids heads

>127 cindydavid4: That's probably fun for kids. I just couldn't see reading a grownup novel that way.

no neither could I. I am trying to find a book about a young couple who travels to Morroco. The pages are filled with interesting art and bits and peices of letters. Cant find it on my shelves tho, but I found it fascinating and it very much added to the story. There is also this is how you lose the time war which is written all in letters.

Not the one I was looking for, but this is similiar Griffin & Sabine

Yes, I was thinking of Griffin & Sabine. It's cute but cumbersome.

>Q48

I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything like that in real life — the nearest is maybe B.S. Johnson’s The unfortunates, which comes as separate booklets in a box (you have to read them in random order).

If I were a publisher with no obligation to be practical and profit-oriented, I might be thinking about:

— The ultimate Seven pillars of wisdom, printed on very fine sandpaper, and with extra loose sand to fall out when reading in bed. And scented with camel-dung.

— The literalist’s version of that tedious soft-porn book by Alessandro Baricco, printed on fine pink silk trimmed with lace (and with wire stiffeners and a few interesting little hooks to undo).

— Novel on yellow paper done as a carbon copy on thin yellow typing paper, bound in a manila folder.

— The bus-conductor Hines printed on the back of used Glasgow Corporation bus tickets, doused with a fine solution of chip-fat, and decorated with smudges of deep-fried Mars Bar residue.

— The Complete Works of Kingsley Amis, the pages slightly sticky from being doused in beer, and coated with a fine sprinkling of cigarette ash.

— Zola’s La Terre, matured in a dung-heap for a few weeks before shipping; Le ventre de Paris, printed on cabbage leaves…

>132 thorold: HA!!Id read those!

found another on my shelves by the author of Griffin and Sabine the museum of purgatory narrated by 'non' he is the curator with many illustrations of objects that might be there,and explainations 'a magic carpet wasnt for flying, it was for looking at, like one looks into a fire'

>132 thorold: Such inspiration!

How about the collected bon mots of Quentin Crisp printed in teeny tiny Garamond on a slightly soiled white Hermes silk scarf that can be worn while mooching a dinner off someone in a toney restaurant?

Or Tolstoy's novella Master and Man trodden out letter by letter in a Siberian field of deep snow as a kind of performance piece to be photographed from the International Space Station and sold as a large poster?

>132 thorold: don't go there with Portnoy's Complaint

>132 thorold: Too, too funny! Thanks for the laugh!

>132 thorold: An addition Kelman might appreciate to your Bus Conductor Hines, but which I certainly didn't, was one Hogmanay when I was riding a Glasgow Corporation bus in the front row, and a woman who had been celebrating entirely too much for late afternoon, sat herself down on my lap, singing at the top of her lungs, and wearing an overcoat that was wet in the wrong places. I honestly think she didn't even register that I was there! Luckily I was going home and not going out yet. Not quite as bad as >135 baswood:, but getting there.

>137 SassyLassy: Very Glaswegian!

Of course, there’s also the Senual Edition of D H Lawrence, which has felt the rush of the type in printing, the thud of the press which cannot halt, but every moment throws forward the paper to begetting and, falling back, imprints the young-born letterpress on the leaf. It knows the intercourse between type and paper, ink drawn into the fibres of the page, the darkness of the print and the nakedness of the bare paper…

>138 thorold: …and the Doomed Edition of Thomas Hardy, each volume of which is specially designed to self-destruct in a picturesquely rural way (falling off a cliff or into a milk churn; catching fire; getting lost under the doormat; being swept out to sea; being struck by lightning; getting accidentally covered in ruddle and/or furze….). The doom is programmed to take effect shortly before the lovers in the plot can be reconciled.

>138 thorold: watch out, you're getting poetic

the museum at Purgatory Ive had this book forever but don't think I acutually read it. Doing that now, and it really is extraordinary

aHA! Remembered that the woman had a map tattooed on her arm to try and find her lover so googled and found the tattooed map !

(from goodreads) The Tattooed Map is Lydia's journal of the days and weeks leading up to her disappearance. Each page contains her daily experiences--her growing shock and fear as the map unfolds itself, her deteriorating relationship with Christopher, her conversations with strangers--as well as the memorabilia she collects along the way: maps and postcards, train tickets and postage stamps, lists of books she's reading and souvenirs she's bought--all pasted in the margins of the journal.When Lydia disappears midway through the journey, her friend Christopher takes up the journal, using it first as a means of recording his search for her and then, increasingly, as a clue to her fate. A combination travelogue, mystery, and ghost story, The Tattooed Map is a mesmerizing, physically beautiful book. Each page is gloriously decorated with the kinds of fascinating flotsam and jetsam that travelers find cluttering their pockets and notebooks at the end of a trip.

Back briefly to Q47 from last week — I just noticed that the book I’ve been reading on and off for the last week and a half, Chronicles from the land of the happiest people on earth (published a couple of months ago), has a blurb from Toni Morrison (d. August 2019). Posthumous blurbing is one of the pet hates I listed in >98 thorold:, but I didn’t even register that one until after I’d finished the book, which just goes to show that I obviously don’t look at the blurbs at all on books I already know I want to read!

>142 cindydavid4: Gosh, wasn't Lydia the Tattooed Lady an old Groucho song? "You can learn a lot from Lydia." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uVBBxptpSY8

Haha! Yes indeed. Love Marx Brothers.

>145 cindydavid4: Have you read Harpo Speaks!? As a kid, the Italian and Irish kids kept throwing him out the window at school, so he was taught by his grandfather at home and was the only one of the brothers to have a bar mitzvah. He was sent to the USSR as a goodwill ambassador before the outbreak of World War II and enlisted to bring back secret dispatches for President Roosevelt. His description of his visit to the Soviet Union was fascinating. Salvador Dali painted him as an angel playing his harp in heaven. He was a brave, kind, astute, and of course very funny man.

oh yes! The part I remember is that he became silent because he couldnt remember his lines. . Did you ever see the lucille ball show with him? They did the mirror routine and it was so hilarious! (its on you tube) I remember mom cried when she heard he died

>130 cindydavid4: >142 cindydavid4:
I adore Griffen and Sabine and most of Barbara Hodgsons books, but then art and design are as important to me as text, so artistic and clever mergings of the two will be a hit with me. Unfortunately they have slowed down with publishing new works

I’d like an edition of Shackleton’s South: The Endurance Expedition encased in ice.

>121 SassyLassy: I guess there wouldn't be much to Gone with the Wind.

>151 SassyLassy: Just some red clay and the smell of smoke

And a cover made of a curtain?

>153 jjmcgaffey: Love that idea of the green velvet cover, maybe scented with >152 labfs39:'s smoke, but unfortunately the book is gone

>155 SassyLassy: with carol burnette wearing it, of course

>153 jjmcgaffey:, >156 cindydavid4:

LOL

I've kind of skirted the edges of this question, with questions on starred threads and such like.


image from Express Digest - artist Alex Chinneck

QUESTION 49: Posts

However, I would really like to know, since Club Read is a place to talk about books and the wonderful and wonderfully off topic ideas that pop up from time to time

What is it that makes you post on a particular thread?
Conversely, what makes you hold back?
Do you wish you posted more?

Post it all here.

>158 SassyLassy: I usually post if the thread includes a topic I am interested in or an ongoing discussion. I also post if a book is reviewed that I want to comment on. Since there are too many threads to keep up with, I star the ones I look at often. Sometimes it is fun to just lurk and read the threads.

Just realized I never commented on the last question, so:

Q48: Tactile books
I'm someone who dislikes gimmicks in books—I've gone on record with the unpopular opinion that I find French flaps kind of useless and actively dislike deckle edges. One notable exception, though: a good friend sent me the wonderful Telephone Tales by Gianni Rodari, which has foldout pages and little inset illustration pages, and I find the whole package totally charming. Because they're a series of bedtime stories, most no longer than a page or two, those extras are totally in keeping with the tone and style of the book. I've been doling them out to myself a few at a time, and having a little extra paper in there to fiddle with is fun. I don't think I'd like it as much if this were a novel or collection that I was reading straight through.

Q49: Posts
I was just thinking about this. I tend to post when I have something or other to say about a book, more than I'll write "great review!" even if I'm thinking of it. But I'm trying to poke my head into individual threads a bit more so I'm doing that more than I used to. But still, only when something in a review really moves me to write, and certainly there are a lot of great reviews here that I don't comment on other than nodding my head on this end.

I keep up with a lot of different threads as time allows, mostly threads where the authors and I have similar tastes—or where I find their POVs interesting even if I haven't read any of the books they talk about. If there's no overlap in subject matter I generally don't feel like I have much to say that would be genuine.

I post when I see something interesting, or want to respond to something someone wrote.

Hmmm . . . one thing for sure: I can’t resist posting when I see a red twisty post box!

>Q49 I suppose I post if I feel I have something to say, or want to acknowledge some kinship to what someone else has posted. I like some of the community threads and read them semi-regularly, but I'm aware that I have limits.

I do try to get around to the personal threads of many of our members, even if we don't read the same stuff. Even if I don't have something worthy to say, I sometimes just leave a little note to let them know I've popped in. But, here also, I'm aware I can't do everything (and have a life off LT....:-)

>163 avaland: Those little 'pop in' notes are appreciated.

Q49 Posts

Ironically, this one has been asked at a time when most of us probably have other things on our minds than posting for the fun of it…

I think I’m more or less in the same place as >160 lisapeet: — I tend to be shy of posting when I don’t have anything very concrete to say, unless the person I’m responding to is someone I’ve had a lot of interactions with previously.

I think there are two conflicting problems of social media going on here — on the one hand there’s the awful example of those pointless FaceBook posts with thousands of inane photic comments no-one is ever going to read (‘“Most relevant” is selected…’), which teaches you to take the Wittgenstein approach to comment posting (“whereof one cannot speak…”); on the other hand, there’s the problem that the person who posted the review or whatever it was can’t see how reading it has made you smile. Or even that you’ve actually read it, and not just skipped that post. Lois’s system of “pop in posts” has a lot to offer there.

there are times I wouldn't mind a like button, or at least some emojis, but I can manage to post replies without them

Each year the posts seem to start off fast and furious, and then attenuate starting around mid February. It isn't that we've all stopped reading others' threads, so at what point and how does the impetus to post wane?

holiday time v work? and the annual review/reset factor. And maybe we get set on our ways -- I do anyway.

I don't see myself as a good poster on others threads overall. Maybe can get too wrapped up in other stuff. There are times i see a lot of people say similar things and I think hmm should i try and find a novel way of saying that too, so yes maybe a like function would be a way.

The number one reason i don’t post is because i haven’t read the whole thread. I fall behind and then… (and apologies to the French posters. It’s really hard for me to manage. I like the posts when I translate them though.)

But if I have caught up on a thread I have a really strong urge to say something, anything. Just, good job reading and posting, whatever. But also I don’t want to be stupid or facebooky or neglectful. And that leaves me mute a lot. I want to say something but can’t think of anything useful and constructive to say. As Mark notes, it’s hard to express the smile or the other things you feel when responding…and not sound silly. So that’s my other mute.

It's hard to find the right balance. I know I feel kind of let down if I post a review and then... crickets. Vox Clamantis In Deserto and all. And yet, I want my thread to remain meaningful. How often and what I post often depends on the person whose thread I am on and their personality and how well I know them. Some people's threads I only post on when I have something cogent to add. Other's I drop a little note almost every time I visit. I would hate to build an algorithm for my posting behavior.

I read everyone's threads in Club Read and keep up pretty well with that as they come, but I only post if I have a connection to make or something I think is worthwhile to add. I like that in Club Read we tend to post "on topic" which I think of as good book talk or big life events that are really important and valuable to share. But there isn't a lot of idle chit chat. I like that.

One of the reasons I don't post a ton is that I often read threads on my phone and LT is not set up great for that format. So I generally only post when I'm sitting down with my laptop.

OK, the way I operate is a kind of "do unto others..." How would I like to be treated?"

I try to get to many of the threads here, but I'm terribly human and can't possibly get to everyone (and have a life outside of LT!) Please do not take offense. And certainly I do not expect ALL the members here to stop in on our thread. Only a fraction of my fellow members read the kind of books I read, but that's fine because I do like to explore...see what you all are reading generally, and I oftentimes am interested in what you are saying about it. Much of the time, I read the thread owner's posts but less of the commentary. I also admit to not reading all the reviews written, but I read the ones for books that interest me or ones that I also have read.

Another confession: I believe very much that "an overall sense of community" makes for a great group, as this group has proved over many years now. One reaps what they sow (gosh, that's the 2nd biblical reference....I'm reverting back to the 70s)

I would not like the FB-like 'thumbs up' or smiley faces. Surely one can write at least a couple of words or one honest sentence? We are readers after all....

>170 labfs39: You article what I think is probably universal to most readers here.

>172 avaland: "one honest sentence" -- something many a writer has striven for

It's interesting though, I like to think I can, but when struggling to say something I suppose it is a writers affectation I don't just like to repeat very much the same . . . which does mean more work, maybe I need to slow down and work on the communication and figure out what i want to say --- I do also try to avoid tying myself in knots of over reading and complicated analysis - which i think you'll recognise i don't always succeed with.

I'm glad others are similarly somewhat flat when a review seems ignored - what i tell myself, from the numbers of people who catch up on months of a thread and then let me knwo or those that tell me they read but just didn't think of what to say is that it is not just hanging in the wind.

Threads often take serious reading --- I defo get a feeling as i do that that I should be reading a book, often the one written about, so I could say something and also to be a good reader like x, y, or z reader. Anxiety about reading is quite a thing.

There is definitely a balance to be achieved between reading posts and reading our books; and it's probably different for everyone.

I post when I manage to catch up with someone’s thread or when a discussion/review makes me join the conversion. That means that I post a lot more early in the year - once I get behind, things get weird.

I like the conversations here - which is why I have a thread and don’t just post my reviews in the books pages.

see, im the opposite. after this year of having my own thread, I find only a few people comment. If I post the same in the what are you reading threads, i get many more. If that means Im going to cut and paste to a couple of threads, which is what I did before, well, Im doing that now. So I don't need my own thread and will probably let it unravel. Thats not to say that I won't read others; I definitly will post anyplace that sounds interesting. It just gets me off the hook of having quality reviews, which Im not good at (thanks to Alison who has been here, but I'll keep you up to date on other threads!) But annie, I agree, I love the discussion in other peoples threads!

Club Read tends to be cyclical - we are a very busy group of posters when everything is new and shiny and after that things slow down - some people keep posting in their threads at least, some don’t (ahem) and posting elsewhere slows down. :) I hope that every year will be the one where I do not fall through and stop posting early and I am yet to make it through a year. But that’s fine. :)

Q49

I'll post when I feel like I can contribute to a conversation that interests me...provided there aren't too many intervening posts/time. It often feels awkward if the conversation has moved on to other things when I find it, so when I come to things days or weeks after the fact I find myself second-guessing whether or not my posting would be welcome.

I want to adjust the balance of my posting versus lurking to engage more in timely conversation. Because it's not really fair to hope and wish for lively conversation in my own thread if I'm not reciprocating and participating in other threads.

>169 dchaikin: and others I fall behind and then…

I start each year well behind on people's threads, as I never start reading the next year's threads until the next year is actually here. By that time things have taken off in all kinds of directions in many threads, and I am doomed from the start.

One thing I have noticed in Decembers past is that posting on current threads often drops off as people rush to the new year. I'm just trying to get through the current year!

Last go around



image from Adobe Stock

QUESTION 50: Surprises

What surprised you most about your reading this year?

Was it the way it veered off into interesting nooks and crannies, or was it that you actually managed to stick to a plan?

Was it a change from current books to back in time or the other way around?

Did you discover a wonderful new to you author, or a wonderful new niche to pursue?

Will you take anything from what you learned about your reading this year forward into next year?

>180 SassyLassy: I've fallen behind a bit on questions, so I'll just pick up with this latest one.

I deliberately didn't have a plan again this year, and enjoyed some of the unexpected turns my reading took, such as taking part in the Mantel Cromwell trilogy group read. I'd avoided that series for years as I didn't think it would be my thing, and ended up thoroughly enjoying all three.

Books set in the mountains and nature generally continued to draw me as they did in 2020, and The Name of the Rose inspired me to get back into some light Latin revision later in the year (I was also a little surprised just how much I enjoyed The Name of the Rose - that's been on mount TBR for some time).

There were some surprises. The hugely popular Hamnet left me disappointed, whilst at the other end of the scale the forgotten The Maiden Dinosaur utterly charmed me. On that note I read more Northern Irish writing this year than I have in quite some time and plan to read some more next year.

Nearly 40% of my reading was non-fiction; I'm enjoying keeping a good smattering of non-fiction titles in my annual reading, so hope to end up with a similar split in 2022 (although it's never planned out). I was surprised at how many memoirs I read this year - I hadn't noticed how much I enjoy that genre before, but I think that's because when I think of memoirs I automatically think of celebrity autobiographies which aren't my thing.

I'm usually last to the party with new books, so surprisingly nearly a third of my reads this year were published in 2020 or 2021. I didn't read anything prior to 1950 which is unusual for me, so I'll probably look to head back to some older classics in 2022. I also have a non-fiction itch to scratch on Arabian people promoted by a Libyan memoir.

My biggest surprise was finding books in translation. Reading Globally's themes are keeping me very interested in many books. Ive of course read books about other countries and cultures but for the first time Im really focused on authors writing in their own culture and language

I have read 70 books this year - which is quite a change since over the last few years I was lucky to get 40. But retirment is a wonderful thing.....

My fav new to me author is Kelly Barnhill her fantasy novel has been compared favorabley with Neil Gaiman; most of her books are written for YA and the feel like fairy tales, but I found them well written, with just enough tension and suspense to keep me interested. The Girl Who Drank The Moon is an excellent start

Another new author of Oliver Le Farge who in the early 20th century went to college to stude anthropology and found himself drawn to the Navaho tribe Many of his books and shorts stories are about that culture, and his respect for their customs is so different from other authors of that time. My firs book was Laughing Boy

Q50 Surprise!

I've not really analysed my last year's reading properly yet, so maybe there are surprises buried in the numbers, but otherwise I can't think of anything very unexpected. It is slightly disappointing that the only clear project I formulated in advance — to read through Toni Morrison — stranded and got forgotten about roughly halfway through. But I wouldn't really call it surprising.

Maybe it is a surprise that I've already managed to get past the halfway point of the mammoth Dutch novel-cycle Het Bureau, but if so, it's also a surprise that I haven't yet started the thickest of last year's Christmas books, one I was particularly looking forward to, La noche de los tiempos. And the indefatigable S. Claus has now added The books of Jacob, almost as thick, to the pile. I'm looking forward to that, as well.

Minor surprises are that I managed to read a whole novel set in Liechtenstein, as well as not one but two monographs on Neutral Moresnet.

Writers who surprised me in a good way included Erik Neutsch, author of the monumental building-site novel Spur der Steine; Adalbert Stifter, whom I had wrongly filed away in my mind as a dull nineteenth century figure; and Daša Drndić, whom I should have known about and didn't.

But maybe the biggest surprise was discovering that I'd just binge-read the whole of the Adrian Mole saga...

I think the biggest surprise was how un-delighted I was with my reading. I enjoyed lots of things just fine, but there were no rapturous moments.

While I have the impression that I am doing just fine with all this bad news and isolation--I am solitary and cynical by nature--part of me kept waiting for things to "get back to normal." That sense of waiting pulls a lot of attention and energy away from my book concentration.

As someone who ticks several "highly vulnerable" boxes re covid, thinking about "what if this is the last thing I ever read?" has made me impatient and irritable with my current book if it fails on some level.

Perhaps in 2022 I can see living with the pandemic as the new normal and regain more of my normal reading interest.

>183 thorold:

It strikes me that the Adrian Mole books are just the antidote to living through 2020 and 2021. Perhaps they'll work equally well in 2022.

>184 nohrt4me2: I also seem to have had less patience to stick with books that just were not working for me. Why waste time on them? In the past, I would force myself to finish a book once I got started, no matter how annoyed I was or how much I disliked the book. I have been kinder to myself about that and thus have "skipped and skimmed" quite a few books this year. I still managed to read more than 100 books in 2021.

I've been away from this thread for quite a while, so I'll just chime in on the last one plus the new one and then try to stay active in the new year

Q49
I try to post from time to time on threads that I follow regularly, even if it's just to chime in with a quick "nice review, thanks" comment. I guess it's just a way to be encouraging and to let the person know that I've been reviewing their thread from time to time. I must admit, though, that I tend to comment more frequently on reviews/posts about books I've read rather than books that I haven't but that seem intriguing. I guess I just like an excuse to write more about my own experiences. Not proud of that, particularly. Otherwise, I do enjoy when threads evolve for a while into philosophical/historical/personal discussions of one sort or another. Someone mentioned being disappointed when they post a review and don't get any responses. I fully understand that. On the other hand, I do figure people are scanning my thread from time to time, as I do get comments once in a while. I sort of relate this to the weekly radio show I do. Most of the time, I my 2-hour show and never get any calls or emails (unless I hear from Darryl!). I learned a long time ago that that doesn't mean nobody's listening.

Q50
My biggest surprise this year wasn't a happy one. It came from my continued reading about African American history and the history of racism in America, and entailed continued realization of how little I've understood about this history over my life (and I'm now 66).

I was surprised by how irritating I found the writing to be in The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, given how much praise there was for his previous novel.

I wasn't surprised, really but relieved and gratified, by how well Philip Roth's The Human Stain held up for me upon my reread after so many years.

Nothing much surprising - some good books, some poor, nothing that springs to mind as fantastic. Didn't reach my goals for discards and BOMBs - which has been true of every year but one since I started setting them.

The only surprise is that I managed to cross over the 200 books goal I had in GR despite my reading slump in April-June. None of my plans worked except that my history read through got nudged a bit when I finished one of the big history of the world tomes. Unless I get distracted again, I am off pre-history (mostly) and into (written) history which also means surviving literature (starting with the Sumerians) and less pots and arrowheads (which were fun for a bit but still). So we shall see.

I know I cannot follow a plan but still I make some tentative ones. We shall see how well they work again. It helps that noone around here really makes fun of me and my plans (and my definite inability to follow the plans).

I did finally got around to reading Octavia Butler’s novels this year and read all of them. That’s probably the highlight of the year - there are some novels from other authors I may have liked more but as a body of work, that’s definitely better than pretty much any other I had read through.

My love (and understanding) of Mary Oliver deepened -- shouldn't surprise me yet did.

My awareness also of how other things in life have impacted my reading - not just in the sense e.g. of work taking me away from it and diverting me in an easy way, but impacting my interests and openness, my focus in a way on study. Perspective I guess.

How helpful it was to read of people that are lgbtq+, although different to me, to see such themes addressed -- to hear of love and deep commitments in life for those people, their real life, that goes far beyond the media's stuckness with these labels (I'm thinking of Niven Govinden's Diary of a film and Torrey Peters' Detransition, Baby). This gives me thoughts of how in a way I have limited myself from some things maybe for reasons of resonance, and how that in fact may go beyond lgbtq+ books and into other reading. I know I am always surprised whenever I finish one of the Great books, I kind of worship them and whilst I don't see them as beyond me I can still act like they are, which may be part of how I tried to fit in, so a surprise that I have now read such and such a book.

Overall some surprise I could go along with my reading as well as I did at times this year, and also that I could get back towards it though other things have challenged that.

In some way/s is every book a surprise?

Q50 surprises

No major surprises. Part of me is interested that my three favorite books all involved Africa (see favorites thread). I had a couple mild disappointments. I never fully took to Petrarch or to Nabokov, my big themes, or, for that matter, to any Booker longlist books. I did take to trilogies by Mantel and Tsitsi Dangarembga. And I finally read Gurnah, and Penelope Lively and Muriel Spark and they were each surprisingly good.

I’m not surprised I read so many more novels than nonfiction books- but it’s unusual for me.

>190 tonikat: In some way/s is every book a surprise?

Indeed! When I was teaching I used to hide a wrapped book (one that was already on my shelves) each week and let them try to find it. They took turns reading it and at times ask for it again after that week is out. So much fun (not my idea, read it in a teachers mag and thought it a cool idea to stimulate reading)

>192 cindydavid4: - a very cool idea and a nice one to have acted on, one they'll remember I'd have thought.

>180 SassyLassy:
Question 50!

I suppose what surprises me is how well just going the serendipitous route (no plans or goals) works out. So, nooks and crannies were welcome, plans were not. I did abandon or 'partially read' 8+ novels, a few were even by favorite crime novelists, but I did not have the patience currently to slog through a book that isn't doing anything for me (quite frankly, I can't see the appeal of revisiting the 70s, for example).

Hmm. Copyrights for the books read run from 1974 to 2021. the majority in the last 10 years. And if I liked a book by a certain author and had another book by her/him in the house, I tended to go straight to that book next (so a fair number of authors on the list more than once).

There were a few new authors for me, and I may keep an eye on one or two and see what their next book is like (or what an earlier one is like). I've sent for the first novel by one of them. We have a houseful of books of all kinds (and more is sure to arrive*) so I think I may stick with the serendipitous non-plan for what looks to be like another Covid year.

*We cleared out our Amazon, Book Depository & Abe wishlists/carts by either deleting them from the list or buying them. Our holiday present to ourselves (it was only about 8 books bought).

Q50: Surprises

No real surprises for me this year... still reading pretty randomly, sometimes for work or book clubs but almost always for pleasure. One thing I noticed I was reading more of this year, at the expense of all the periodicals I'm now behind on, is email newsletters—a lot of them by writers and/or artists I like or admire, and a lot on the creative process, plus a few about cooking and fountain pens (not at the same time). Not sure whether it's because of how they're proliferating this year or just that I'm a bit more in search of casual connection/input now that I'm home all the time. Actually, that might make for a good Avid Reader question...

But anyway, nah. No real surprises other than the usual delights of discovering new-to-me authors, many of them found on CR thanks to you good folks.

Q50 - SURPRISES

My surprises were how many books I read. After a run of years reading only 30 - 40 books, this year I was back up to my old average of about 80 books. My other surprise was how few non-fiction books I read - only about 10%, down from 25% the last decade or so, and over 50% decades ago.

I usually read a bunch of travel narratives and bios, but I seemed to focus a lot on fantasy, and good reads recommnded by you guys. My first non fiction for the year will probably be the new Bill Bryson Shakespeare

Q49 falls most conveniently... Yes, I wish I posted more because then I might post better or at least use what is in the end "social media" more appropriately. It took me a very long time to understand that most people care less about discussion and ideas than about socialising, and I'm not good at the latter.

When I joined LT there were still several large debate-oriented forums around where I was active and in fact I thought at the time that LT would be my "quiet" place where I was planning to interact with family--hence I chose a very personal userID and one that for the first time in 16 years (of "onlining") gave away my gender. (Originally I had paid no attention whatsoever that my internet handles were neutral but as soon as I identified as a woman the difference in how I was seen, addressed etc. became startling.)

But things changed, the forums disappeared (in a few cases replaced by Discord communities I also use), and now LT is where I post most often in English... but yeah, not to any "optimal" standard. There are many reasons for that; LT shrank, I shrank, time is shrinking, etc.