Posted on October 24, 2008 - by MG
How I choose books to read
Just been glancing through an old favourite, “If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler” by Italo Calvino (from which I quote in Joshua 3, heh heh), and marveling at the passages where he writes about all the different types of books he encounters in the bookshop, most of which try to distract the reader from going to the book he actually means to buy.
Also, fretting slightly about the forthcoming release of Joshua 2. I’m sure this is normal authorial angst – will it sell? will shops stock it? will they put it on promotion for long enough? or will it sink with little trace, read only by a small fraction of loyal readers who also read Joshua 1?
(Apologies for readers if you didn’t realise authors go through this – we do. Selling books is very hard work!)
So, it bring me round to the question of how readers choose books?
Well, how?
Here’s what I do:
In order of priority:
1. New Books By Authors That I Love And Who Are Considered To Be Still In Their Prime (In my case this would be books by Haruki Murakami, Kazua Ishiguro, Mario Vargas Llosa)
2. Book By Authors That I Love But Haven’t Yet Found Or Have Been Saving Up To Read (i.e. older books by Haruki Murakami, Kazua Ishiguro, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
3. Books By Authors That Seem Promising Possibilities To Join My A List (for example, I may have read about an author in TIME or something and decided that it’s worth trying one of his/her books.)
4. Books Written By A Friend (now that I’m a novelist, I have more of these)
5. Books That Are So Massively Talked About You’d Be Totally Out Of The Loop If You Didn’t Read Them Too (e.g. Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, The Name of the Rose, On Chesil Beach)
6. Books That A Good Friend Recommended Very Highly (although authors in this category usually wind up in the third category above. Right now I am considering Laura Restrepo’s Delirium, Alfredo Bryce Echenique’s A World For Julius. Failed recommendees include the tedious Javier Marias and fellow Murakami groupie, David Mitchell (the author not the comedian). Sorry, it’s probably me not being clever enough, but there you go.)
7. Young Adult Books That I Really Should Have Read Because I’m A Children’s Author But In Fact Am Only Getting Round To Now Because People Keep Asking If I’ve Read Them (such as The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin)
8. Books Which Take My Fancy During A Browsing Session (many are purchased but few are read…)
9. Old Favourites That I Re-read Every Few Years (e.g. ‘Numbers In The Dark’ by Italo Calvino, anything by Haruki Murakami)
10. Books That Might Help With Something I’m Working On (mainly non-fiction, books on novel structure etc, but occasionally I’ll use Murakami as a mood-setter when I’m actually writing)
So there you have it. Adverts, book reviews don’t have anything but the tiniest influence.
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The MG Harris Blog
Website of MG Harris, author of the children's book series "The Joshua Files".Information for school visits and events.
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October 24, 2008
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Ursula K. LeGuin?
Well, better read her adult novels from the sixties and seventies … great taoism-inspired author!
“The Left Hand of Darkness” with its society of people who only have sexes every few weeks when in “kemmer” (so they won’t know if they will be male or female next time) is really cool. Feminism that is fun to read.
And she is as good in writing about trees and woods and nature stuff as JRR Tolkien. Believe me, lads’n'lasses.
Some years ago, my first blog had a motto from one of her poems. I’ll try to remember, wait a minute:
We don’t need very much
water, walls, warms
the flickering ring of faces
I think I’ll reread “Left Hand of Darkness” this winter. Coz it’s a winter book — in Germany it even came under the title “Winterplanet”.
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October 24, 2008
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Hrm, WARMTH I meant, not WORMS, hahaha.
Typo of the day.
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October 24, 2008
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Oh yeah I read that and The Disspossessed when I was at Uni, they were considered required reading by Oxford Uni Speculative Fiction Group.
But I missed out on the YA stuff…
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October 24, 2008
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Speculative Fiction Group … so-so … I see! You were thinking about writing yourself, weren’t you? Don’t you deny it.
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October 25, 2008
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Hmm, Laura Restrepo’s “Delirium”? I couldn’t get past the few first pages, too boring.
Sad to find you didn’t like Javier Marías… but that happens.
I just bought a bunch of Murakami’s old books, we’ll see if they are worth it.
Martín
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October 25, 2008
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Martin – maybe I shouldn’t have started with A Heart So White? Really too impenetrable. Mind you from what you’re saying so is Delirium…?
Frank – If writing occurred to me back then – I wouldn’t have dared mention it. My fellow OUSFG members were such literary scifi connoisseurs, regular attendees of Eastercon etc, I suspect they rather looked down on my mainstream, commercial leanings and were amused by my fascination with genre TV shows (which were only fit to enjoy ironically, so they thought). So I didn’t write for their fiction magazine…
Maybe it was a reaction to being in the ‘scifi ghetto’? Ah, how we used to discuss that – whether one should aspire to break out of the ghetto or not.
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October 26, 2008
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Oh yeah, I know these “discussions”.
My opinion was and is: there is no such thing like a scifi ghetto … it is merely a kitchen garden, with a fence you can jump over back and forth every minute …
Like you do with the Joshua Files
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October 28, 2008
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Creo que Delirio es de lo mejor que ha escrito Restrepo, yo si te recomendaría que lo leyeras. También Diablo Guardián de Xavier Velasco o La Sombra del viento de Carlos Ruiz Zafón (aquí se puso muy de moda sus libros últimamente, los dos últimos me encantaron). También acabo de terminar The Kite Runner de Khaled Hosseini y me pareció hermoso.
En gustos de películas no concidimos mucho pero Vargas Llosa y García Márquez son de mis favoritos y gracias a ti descubri a Murakami (!!!) asi que tal vez mis recomendaciones de libros si te gusten
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October 28, 2008
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Ahora estoy esperando que mi hermano termine Invisible City para leerlo en lo que tengo mi propia copia!!!