Why do you choose the books you choose and what factors influence these decisions? Sometimes, the choice can be almost whimsical, other times you eagerly hunt down the particular book. The odd time, books are so vehemently recommended that you have to immediately get a copy, if simply to placate someone else. Of course, there are the books you know you should read, The Classics, then there are the Books That Everyone Constantly Refers To (Sally Rooney), the Books That Look Cool To Read (David Foster Wallace) and finally, that oft-ignored group of Books That You Enjoy Reading Regardless (His Dark Materials).
Are we choosing our books or are our books choosing us? Are the books we read speaking to us and telling us to be ‘better’ and ‘more intelligent’ readers or are they telling us that we can read whatever we feel like reading? Let’s consider the different channels from which we obtain our recommendations that inform our next read.
The traditional review
Reviews in periodicals and newspapers are something of an antiquarian art nowadays. Fifty years ago a negative review in the TLS may have meant the end of book sales and, while reviews still matter, they now hold less weight to many people. There is not as much assurance on the reader’s part when reading a book that has received an excellent review in the newspaper as there was before. Readers and critics are looking for different things it would seem. Often, the longer, printed reviews are distilled down to a single paragraph or sentence that is selected as a pull quote and printed somewhere on the book. The object, much like a film poster, carries the reviews on itself.
If an author published another book that met great success, their new book will refer back to reviews of their other (perhaps more successful) book instead. This can be extremely frustrating for readers though because while it’s great that X book received glowing reviews, the same may not be true for the book you’re holding in your hand. This can be misleading and irksome if you come to realise you bought a book based on the reviews of a different book by the same author. Inevitably, reviews will be added in the second or third runs of books, considering that all of the reviews have not yet been written when the book first comes out, but nevertheless, who’s to say that their next book will receive similar reviews to the one before it? The initial prompt for this article came from the nonsensical, one-word reviews that are printed either on book covers or before the title page. Reviews such as, ‘funny’ don’t tell me much about the book; is it ‘funny’ how terrible the book was?
Judging books based on their cover
Contrary to the old adage, we do in fact judge books by their covers. Sometimes the judgement can be hilarious. Once, I had a male customer come up to me in a bookshop and ask if the award-winning ‘Milkman’ by Anna Burns was ‘too girly’ because the cover is a pink sunset. Book covers can catch your eye, they can evoke a certain feeling which causes you to unknowingly gravitate towards the book. Some of my favourite covers include ‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt, the Picador Classics cover of ‘American Psycho’ by Bret Easton Eilis and ‘Crudo’ by Olivia Lang. More often than not we do pick up books in bookshops because of their covers so it’s fair to say that an intriguing cover will gain more haphazard traction, more picking up and consulting the blurb.
A blurb like no other
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain that blurbs told me more. Few blurbs are informative and more often than not they don’t tell you anything about how the book feels, focusing instead on establishing the genre the book fits in to. Coupled with the reviews that generally appear at the back of the book alongside the blurb, one can establish that a book is about a murder: ‘1978. A murder. A knife found in the woods. A note. But no alibi.’ That it is ‘twisted and cleverly mapped out’ (the review), but can we establish whether or not we will like the book from this? I quickly learned to forgo blurbs, almost entirely, and instead turn to the first page of the book and let that inform me. I always advise reading the first page of a book before purchasing.
Word of mouth
More often than not, the best book recommendations come from friends, podcasts or booksellers. Our circle of trust has changed in recent years, people are less likely to be deterred from reading a book if it gets a bad review in The Irish Times but a good review from a close friend will do wonders for any paperback. In this increasing age of interconnectedness, it’s nice to know that people still value those types of recommendations. My advice when choosing your next read? Ask your booksellers, ask your friends and take the printed reviews with a huge pinch of salt.
