How to choose a book
This column first appeared at InterAksyon.com.
Faced with thousands of books in bookstores and millions of titles online, how do you choose the books you will read? The other week I bought a book just because I liked the title: I Regret Everything: A Love Story and its first line, “It would be easy to say my troubles began when a mysterious woman walked into the office but that would ignore the time freshman year in college when Aunt Bren called to let me know my mother had removed all of her clothes in the furniture department at Macy’s and been taken to Bellevue.” I have read and enjoyed many books using the Title+First line method (ex. The Towers of Trebizond + “Take my camel, dear,” said my Aunt Dot = Buy), but I have also abandoned many such books. I wasn’t familiar with Seth Greenland, author of I Regret Everything, but the back cover contained flattering blurbs by Larry David and Maria Semple (author of Where’d You Go Bernadette?) and I’ll believe them.
There’s the old Completist method in which you read all the books written by the authors you like: David Mitchell, Ali Smith, Kate Atkinson, Isak Dinesen, and many others. It’s like watching a new movie by a favorite director—you have some idea what you’re in for. I also go by Book Reviews, recommendations from the reviewers I respect, such as James Wood (kind of snooty) and Stephen King (folksy). Last year I broke up with the New York Times Book Reviews when I noticed that they seemed to be second-guessing the readers. The reviewer’s job is to provide an informed opinion, not to flatter the audience. Not surprisingly, last year’s NYT Notable Books list was singularly blah.
I lurk in bookstores twice a week so I know what’s on the shelves, sometimes better than the sales staff themselves (When people come in asking about titles, I restrain myself from answering). Sometimes I buy a book for its cover design. That’s how I came to own several Haruki Murakami books, all of them designed by the wonderful Chip Kidd. I started them enthusiastically, but have somehow not finished a single one.
If you like discovering great authors whose work has fallen into obscurity, I cannot recommend NYRB Classics strongly enough. Through them I’ve found Olivia Manning, Stefan Zweig, Curzio Malaparte, Gregor von Rezzori, and other authors who might’ve been forgotten had the series not revived their reputations.
Of course there’s the Meant For You method, when a book on a table seems to yell your name, you pick it up, and you’re hooked. My first James Salter and Laurie Colwin books leaped at me from bargain bins. My goal is to own every edition of Salter’s A Sport and A Pastime.
There’s a story by Irwin Shaw in which a character chooses books according to the author photos. Why not, it’s a method backed by millennia of evolution, humans respond to faces. Granted, the beautiful would have an advantage, but when do they not? Presumably that character had never read Thomas Pynchon, who does not get photographed. (For all we know he may be in the cast of Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of his novel, Inherent Vice, probably the only time anyone will ever film a Pynchon novel.)
I picked up the Greenland book and was immediately hooked by the voice of its first narrator, a lawyer in his 30s who is also, secretly, a well-regarded poet. The narrative was gliding along frictionlessly when I stepped on a puddle of barf and hit the wall.
The second narrator is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a cinematic stereotype, the personification of a male fantasy. The writer who invented the term has since disavowed it, but in this case it is depressingly accurate. She is cute, rich, psychologically unstable, adoring, exists to make the guy feel good about himself. The cuter she got—doing an impromptu ballet on the lawn, running into a crowd to protect a protester from the police, the more irritated I became until, at page 158, I quit. Give me a depressed Russian who overthinks a murder (Crime and Punishment), or a sardonic junkie who hates his parents (the Patrick Melrose novels of Edward St Aubyn) but please, no more overprivileged girls who accidentally overdose on tranquilizers.
Last year I had a similar experience with Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, a very engaging book, highly knowledgeable about the thought processes and sex drives of young men. Everything was peachy until I got to the halfway point and realized I didn’t give a flying fig if these self-involved, insecure people fell down elevator shafts. It’s not them, it’s me: I have a life.
Frequently-asked questions:
If you start a book, do you have to finish it? Of course not, life is short and there are too many books. You could put the book away and return to it a few years later. There are books I hated when I first tried to read them—I hurled my copy of Pride and Prejudice at the wall many times when I was in college, and now I love it. There are books I will never get along with, so I give them away.
Can you read more than one book at a time? Of course you can, polygamy is allowed with books, you can be a total slut in your reading habits.
Hard copy or e-book? Whatever suits you better. E-books are convenient, especially if you’re reading Tolstoy. I like the heft and texture of paper, and when the occasion calls for it, I can take Dorothy Parker’s advice: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It must be thrown across the room with great force.”
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 4th, 2015 at 21:27
Oh Lordy, how I love this article!
1. It depends on the bookstore I’m doing my scavenging in. If it’s somewhere that sells new books, then I’d walk, with purpose in my stride, towards the… I kid. I usually go for the cheapest anything with True Crime on it, or Short Horror Stories on it, or, after Wikipedia has convinced me enough, maybe one specific book by one author in particular. The internet introduced me to Ambrose Bierce recently, so I downloaded one of his volumes in my Kindle. The reading experience is not satisfying, however. It was a five minute download, thank you Project Gutenberg, but I’m not that hooked if I can’t sniff paper.
I downloaded 9Mb worth of All of Monsieur de Maupassant’s work that same afternoon. I don’t plan on reading it while I have paper to sniff.
2. If I found myself lost in any Booksale outlet, then I’d go for the cheapest find that I wouldn’t mind reading in public. My latest prize was this collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, and I paid for it, in full, with two ten peso coins.
3. I now have this prosperous collection of Roald Dahl books. His illustrator’s weirdness, Quentin (Blake was it?), got me all the more hooked.
4. Haha, my Meant for You Book was The Graveyard Book by the orgasmic (because he’s so hot he makes the sky wet) Neil Gaiman. I hated myself for finishing it soon. I bought American Gods shortly, and I love me again. The funny thing with The Graveyard Book was that it sold itself like a rent boy. Allow me to share a… status update I posted in a nerd group somewhere.
Maganda nga ba yung Graveyard Book ni Mr Gaiman? It was calling to me the other day habang bumibili ako ng gift wrap doon sa local bookstore dito sa Pasig. Sabi niya eh “tingnan mo lang kung magkano ako.” So tiningnan ko, at P280 lang siya. Sabi niya eh “ano, pwede ka?” Sabi ko eh “hmmm.” Sabi niya eh “dali na, mura lang naman ako eh.” Sabi ko eh “pag isipan ko.” Sabi niya eh “masarap ako, promise.” Sabi ko eh “teka magbabayad na ako sa cashier, balikan na lang kita.”
So iniwan ko lang siyang nakatambay dun sa book shelf na malapit sa cashier, middle row. Uuwi na ako, magbabalot pa ako ng gift eh. Paglingon ko eh nakatingin pa siya sa akin, medio nakangisi, parang alam niyang babalikan ko nga. Malokong libro yun ah.
5. I was recovering from an appendectomy, so I have all that time to squeeze in Four Past Midnight, one Harry Potter book, The World’s Greatest Murderers, and The Hitchhikers’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s the antibiotics coupled with the salivating smell of Betadine that did it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known how I managed to read four books at the same time.
March 5th, 2015 at 11:13
I’m not proud of this but sometimes I buy books just because they won awards. One time, I bought JM Coetzee’s Summertime which had ‘2-Time Man Booker Prize Winner’ (yata) on the cover. Turns out, it’s for his other book. No regrets, though, as that was a funny book.
I try not to leave a novel unfinished even those that are a slog to go through. I always think that sloggy books could redeem themselves at some point in my reading so I don’t abandon them. I recently slogged through John Wray’s Low Boy which the blurbs say is reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye. Liars! I hated it (took me 2 weeks), but I don’t regret finishing it. I have a feeling this is wrong.
I used to be strictly a bargain bin book buyer-hunter but Kinokuniya has such a great selection and the books are not that expensive. I also choose my books through reviews (good and bad), through feelings, and also because of a completist complex – Bret Easton Ellis, Margaret Atwood, Patricia Highsmith, Anne Rice, David Sedaris, etc. The bad reviews stick out the most so I make sure to hunt those. I remember talking to Angus about wanting to read a book about book reviews by you (sort of like your Twisted Flicks). Is this something you’ve considered?
March 5th, 2015 at 16:50
lestat: That’s not a bad gauge, though it depends on which awards. We don’t usually get the Pulitzer fiction awardees.
We used to finish everything, but then we decided that life is too short and there are too many books (and movies, TV shows, etc). Yes, sometimes when the reviews are terrible we are curious to see what the source of hatred is.
Kinokuniya: kakainggit!
Hmm, that sounds like something we’d like to do if there were interested readers. Strictly speaking we don’t do proper book reviews, though, more like riffs on what we’re reading.
Todd Haynes is doing Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara!
Bret Easton Ellis may have peaked with American Psycho, a satire so spot-on critics didn’t even realize it was satire. Now Ellis seems to spend his time picking pointless KSP fights on Twitter.
March 5th, 2015 at 19:02
Man Booker Prize winners are usually okay (Alan Hollinghurst comes to mind) but the Pulitzers, I’m not sure. I’m now reading The Known World because it’s been sitting on the shelf for years and it’s autographed! It’s not my favorite genre but I’m determined to finish it. Nahiya ako sa autograph.
I should probably dump this habit of finishing unfinishable books, too.
I think that’s what makes your reviews so readable. They’re not proper reviews. Hehe. I used to read NYT book reviews, especially the prestige books reviews, but I don’t anymore because life is short.
I’m excited about the Price of Salt movie but I want to read it first. I have a copy but I left it in Manila. It’s an *important* copy because it’s under PH’s pseudonym.
Bret Easton Ellis’s tweets are amusing! Kontrabida but amusing.
March 6th, 2015 at 00:17
lestat: Thank you for asking that. Also, The Known World is great not because it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner. It doesn’t need that. Basta tapusin mo siya! I went to his book signing maybe four years ago? It’s a shame that only five people lined up, but at least I got to interview him about the characters.
Jessica: I will buy copies for my book club friends if the Twisted book of not proper book reviews is published. The riffs on reading are more entertaining than the proper book review.
Finish a book? Yes, because my mind would never stop nagging me about unfinished books. I have paused on some books for months, like Tropic of Cancer and Infinite Jest. In Search of Lost Time is also on pause but I think I’ll reread it because I want to fill it with my pseudo-critical marginalia. I just recently got into this habit of reading with a red pen nearby.
Book slut? Yes. Usually two or three.
Hard copy or e-book? Hard copies. I’ve tried a couple of e-books. It feels like reading long blog posts.
How to choose? I have a completist streak: David Mitchell, Raymond Carver, Marilynne Robinson’s fiction, and Ishiguro. Book reviews from The New Yorker and some book podcasts, especially KCRW’s Bookworm. I am guilty of collecting prize winners, particularly the fiction winners of the NBCC award.
Reading the first sentence or a random one doesn’t work for me because of the shrink wraps. I once went to the trouble of asking the staff to unwrap one book for me to check the table of contents. Staff didn’t leave until I went to the cashier while mentally calculating the change.
March 6th, 2015 at 11:13
If I like the story idea and the writing is good (based on reviews or I actually took a peek), then I look it up. If I like the book so much, then I search for the writer’s other works. This is how I became hooked to Neil Gaiman, Karen Russell, and Tracy Chevalier.
And I’m always making notes of the fave books of my fave writers, musicians, and actors. Like: The Sandman, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Master and Margarita, Catcher in the Rye, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Tenth of December.
And these topics are always tempting:
– Arts and academe, like Possession, The Historian, Sacre Bleu, Girl with a Pearl Earring
– Music, like A Visit from the Goon Squad
Planned reading: The acclaimed writers that I feel I should read, like Don Dellilo, JG Ballard, and Joan Didion. I must limit my reading to their most acclaimed books. (I’ve only reluctantly accepted the sad fact that I’ll never be able to read everything I want to read in just one lifetime.)
Incidentally, just this morning I read this quote by Susan Sontag:
“One must be strict with books. I want to read what I’ll want to reread – the definition of a book worth reading once.”