On Reading

Bob on Books 2024 Reading Challenge

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I love this image because of the value of reading is its power to illumine our lives and our vision even in the darkest hours. As I look ahead to 2024, I anticipate politically contentious times and more global conflict and ecological challenges. I think of St. Augustine who drew upon his spirituality and his extensive reading to write The City of God as he watched the decay of the Roman Empire. Yes, sometimes, books offer a temporary escape, but we cannot escape our times. The best books offer us the vision, the imagination, the principles, that give us the wherewithal to meet our times. This reading challenge is not about numbers but about nourishing your soul and illumining your life. Feel free to embrace one challenge or all twelve. I offer twelve, one for each month, but take the time you need.

A Founding Document or Its Equivalent. Many Americans, for example, have never read the Constitution, nor the debates about the Constitution in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. The founding document I will read is_____________.

A Book on the Country or Birthplace of My Ancestors. Where we are from shapes who we are and what we value yet we often have only scattered memories. Maybe it is simply learning about the town where our parents were born or the country reflected in our surname. The book I will read about my family origins is____________.

A Book by a Celebrated Author From that Country or Birthplace or Ethnic Background. What authors were your ancestors talking about? Literature is part of a cultural heritage. Knowing yours enriches your life. The book I will read is____________.

A Book by a Great Author of the Country in Which You Hold Your Citizenship. Literature is also part of our national heritage. They help us understand something of what it means to be part of this people. The book I will read is____________.

A Story of Courage. It could be fiction or non-fiction. Courage takes all kinds of forms from courage in battle to the courage to stand for a principle to the courage to put oneself at risk to save another. All of us wonder how we will meet such challenges. Stories give us models to inspire and show the way. The story of courage I will read is__________

A Book on the Other. A step toward tyranny is to incite fear or hatred of the other and to portray them as less than fully human. Find a book on an “other” for you, one that acquaints you with their country, or culture, that portrays the riches of their humanity. Perhaps you have one friend from that culture who could suggest something for you to read that you could discuss. The book on the “other” I will read is____________.

Start a New (For You) Series. Louise Penny’s Gamache series got me through the pandemic. The principled police inspector and his love for his wife and children made me want to become a better version of myself, if not another Gamache. Great series draw you into the lives of their characters and help us return to our own lives with fresh perspective. The series I will begin this year is____________.

A Story of Resilience. People have sometimes faced formidable challenges and prevailed because they refused to give up. Read one of their stories and consider what challenge you face where you will not give up. The story of resilience I will read is____________.

A Book that has been Challenged or Banned. Do you know that 60 percent of the books challenged or banned in the US reflected the work of just eleven people? Here is one list of books banned in 2023 that includes Charlotte’s Web, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Grapes of Wrath. It is concerning that small minorities are exercising such power without broader attention. Reading such books helps us understand better what is being banned, stand with banned authors, and refused to allow this to continue unchallenged. The banned or challenged book I will read is____________.

A Book on an Issue that Touches or Could Touch your Community. Is there something that keeps turning up in the local news or even in the “back fence” conversations? Is there one issue on which you could become an informed citizen and mobilize others. We focus so much on national issues and fail to work on local challenges. In my community, the issue is a housing shortage and institutional buyers making it increasingly difficult for first-time home buyers to get into a home, a key to wealth accumulation. The issue I will become better informed about is__________.

A Book that Deepens Your Appreciation of Beauty. This could be a book of poetry, an art book, a gloriously illustrated children’s book, a piece of beautiful science or nature writing, a book on music appreciation–whatever. To fight for beauty and resist the banal, we have to know and love beauty. The beautiful book I will read is____________.

A Book That Deepens Your Inner World. There are great books on spirituality in every religious tradition as well as works on deepening our inner lives written from non-religious perspectives. The pandemic challenged the development of our inner worlds as we faced isolation, loss, and our own mortality. How might we build on the lessons of that time? The book I will read to deepen my inner world is____________.

You might already have some of these books in your personal library or TBR stack. Some topics may interest you but you have no idea where to begin. Your bookseller or librarian can be a great help to you. I apologize to those who were looking for more “fun” fare. I do hope those who use this challenge will find much they enjoy as well as much that is illuminating. Great books often do both for us. I do believe we may face difficult times ahead (though I dearly hope I’m wrong!). This passage from the Lord of the Rings always reminds me of what we can and cannot control in such times

” ‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.

‘So do I, said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’ ”

J. R. R. Tolkien

I hope this reading challenge helps fit you for whatever the times bring, to have the sense that you have both read and lived well in your time. Read well, my friends.

Is It OK to Write OK Books?

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Did you know that between 500,000 and one million books are published in the U.S each year? That doesn’t include all the self-published books which drives to total to between three and four million a year (of course, if we take the four million figure, that’s one new book per 83 people). It makes me wonder whether we need all these books. And my experience as a reviewer suggests that many of them are “just OK.” They may be a satisfying read (and sometimes agonizingly not). They may offer some new insights. But I suspect most will be unknown in ten years and very few in fifty.

Is it OK to write and publish OK books?

One answer to this question is that many books serve a niche audience. What is just OK for me may be delightful, or at least useful for someone in that audience. And if that audience is large enough, it can have a respectable press run and maybe make the author enough money so that he or she can write another book and keep body and soul together, hopefully improving at the writerly craft.

There is also the response that we don’t always know the difference between an OK book and a significant work. Significant works can flop, and OK writing can sometimes take off. Some writers, like Colleen Hoover develop followings. Using BookTok and other online media has propelled some unknowns into best sellers. For all our high tech, word of mouth is also important. We buy books that our friend circles are buzzing about.

At the same time, all those books dropping every week are pushing other titles onto backlists, and often into obscurity within weeks or months unless it makes it to the best seller lists. And that has to happen quickly or it won’t, in most cases. I sometimes see backlist books promoted during a special season, like Black History month, or when the subject of the book is in the news.

I can’t help but wonder if good books, particularly from lesser known authors, fail to get noticed. I’ve reviewed some that I thought at least as good as front list, best selling books. It’s often that you hate to take chances (and so do booksellers) on unknowns.

I guess it comes down to the freedom of the marketplace and the willingness to take risks and the determination that the rewards are worth it. If an acquisition editor wants to publish your book, why not give it a shot? If you want to self-publish and you can accept the start-up costs, why not? Writing is not easy work, and for many who do it, they can’t not write.

Finally, maybe there is something to being profligate. I think of how many seeds my maple drops every year to reproduce itself. And a vanishingly tiny percentage do. Perhaps less seeds might mean none would grow. Perhaps it is like that with books. And maybe the books that stand out from the competition are all the better.

And it may say something about our literacy, freedom and relative economic well-being that so many are able to write at least OK books (although AI generated books may present a future challenge). At the end of the day, as challenging as it may be to sift through many OK books to find the gems, I’m OK with that! It means more chances for great writers to emerge.

Book Surprises

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Two recent reads that were pleasant surprises.

I like to choose the books I read. Most of the time I make good choices. By this time in life, I should know…I think.

Recently, I was reminded of the delight when a book comes your way that you didn’t choose–and you really like it.

Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt was a birthday gift from my son. I do like crime fiction, some more than others. I’d never heard of Blunt. I discovered that all the things of great crime fiction were there–interesting lead characters with their own sorrows and demons, an investigation that is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, a truly evil antagonist with heightening tension. All of this was combined with deft writing that evoked mental images of place, and individual scenes. I was pleased to learn that there were five more in this series featuring detectives Cardinal and DeLorme.

The other was a book chosen for me in LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer giveaways. One of the books that came my way was Bill Harrison’s Making the Low Notes. I’m reading it right now. Harrison is a bass player, the big string bass instruments that are the foundation of a jazz ensemble. Harrison makes the process of learning to play the bass, discovering jazz, playing gigs with quartets, and becoming increasing sought after in the Chicago music scene, a fascinating story. I loved reading about the first time he listened to Miles Davis’ Kinda Blue, one of the greatest of all jazz albums, and listened to bassist Paul Chambers. Last night, I listened to Kinda Blue with a whole new level of attention to the bass part.

Like most readers, I can fall into ruts–reading my favorite writers, favorite genres. Ruts can get dull. I wonder at times if we can become dull as well. I think my son’s mission in life is to get me out of ruts. He has exposed me to graphic literature, more non-fiction than fiction, to writers like Blunt, and even some great baseball books by writers I was not acquainted with. Having someone in your life who does that is a gift. As I blog and review, I’ve been blessed by others who have done this as well. I discovered the Redwall fantasies of Brian Jacques this year through such a recommendation, and it has been like a second childhood! I think of a publicist who always throws in an extra book or two beyond what I’ve requested–no clinkers in the bunch! If you don’t have someone like that, find a good bookseller or librarian who gets to know you and can connect you with books out there you might like but didn’t know about.

Good surprises that lead to finding new books to love and authors to follow is like finding a new restaurant with great food–one that keeps you coming back to try the whole menu. Actually, just thinking about surprises has me wanting to call my favorite bookseller to ask if he will surprise me with a recommendation based on what he’s seen and what he knows about me. Does that sound like fun?

Deciding What Books I Will Keep

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I wrote yesterday about the realization that it is time to deaccumulate books. The question is, what will I keep?

Here are some first thoughts:

A goal is to get our books to the place where moving them, presumably to a smaller place is manageable both in terms of the number of books and the space they will take up. One person commented on yesterday’s post that they try to keep their collection to two boxes so they are ready to move easily at any time. I’m not there yet but that is commendable.

I want to keep some books of timeless beauty and excellence. So many books are “dated” in ten years. I will probably hang onto our Library of America and may set out to read the ones I’ve not gotten to.

I want to keep the books of favored authors. Wendell Berry, John Steinbeck, Wallace Stegner, The Inklings, Chesterton, Sayers, and MacDonald come to mind as well as Pilgrim’s Progress.

I want to keep great theological works–Calvin and Augustine come to mind. Very few recent. Fleming Routledge is an exception.

There are some other Christian writers who have been companions on the journey–Eugene Peterson, J. I. Packer, some John Stott, and James Sire, a personal friend whose thought and writing influenced me from college days to the present.

Reference works if the scholarship is reasonably current and I don’t have duplicate electronic copies. I have a lot of Bible commentaries. I will save the best–Barth on Romans, Lane on Mark, Carson on John come to mind.

There are a few family heirlooms–my grandfather Scott’s Balzac series that my mom loved, some family Bibles.

In history and biography, I will save the most exceptional–Manchester on Churchill, Churchill himself, Chernow on Washington and Grant, and Isaacson on Da Vinci are at the top of the list.

I may keep more poetry than literary prose–George Herbert, Beowulf (my Seamus Heaney translation), Seamus Heaney himself, Langston Hughes, Mary Oliver, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, to name a few.

I probably prefer hardbound books or quality paperbacks for looks and durability.

In the case of books I review, I will probably keep very few. That doesn’t mean they are not worthwhile, but simply that I probably won’t keep coming back to them.

One thing many of the books I’ve mentioned have in common is that I turn to many of them again and again. They continue to reward me with insight. If not, then why do I keep them?

Some I will keep because they represent important junctures in my life, from the Reinhold Niebuhr I discovered in college to a spiritual formation book by Leighton Ford that focused on attentiveness.

This is a process that I will pursue gradually–say two to three books a day, a box a week, a shelf at a time. I suspect there will be a series of “cuts” or “culls.” After all, I hope I had good reasons for originally acquiring the books I did.

Others who have described going through this call it painful. I see that. But I also see it as a chance to remember my reading life. I see it as a chance to liberate my books–to give them a chance to be read by someone else rather than gathering dust on my shelves. And I see it as a chance to bring my library to greater focus, even as this is true for the rest of my life.

Personally, I think it is denial and irresponsibility to let a spouse or children do this for us, if we are granted the time to do this ourselves. And perhaps it is one more parting gift to leave them with the books that clearly meant the most to us, that tangibly express what was dearest to us.

I’d love to hear from others going through this stage of life. I think it is time for adult conversations about such things in the community of bibliophiles.

On Moving Seventy-Five Boxes of Books

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We are in the middle of a long anticipated home project of replacing the old carpet in the upper level of our raised ranch with wood flooring. All but one room has flooring in it as I write and if everything goes as we hope it will done the day you are reading this.

We have lived in our house over 33 years. While we cleared the kitchen a few years ago for a remodel, this is the first time for all the other rooms upstairs. It meant emptying all that was in cupboards and especially on bookshelves.

I ended up hauling 75 boxes of books downstairs. My Library of America collection and some of my mother’s old books. Gardening books, art books, and decorating books, and other miscellaneous fiction including my wife’s Murder She Wrote collection of books. Did I mention that it came to 75 box loads that we more or less stacked under an eight foot long table in our family room.

We won’t be hauling them all back upstairs–we have a huge pile to take to Half Price Books. It has made me look at the books on the lower level of our house, mostly mine, with new eyes. One of our next projects is to re-paint and carpet the lower level of our home (after replenishing some savings from this project). We had less than a month to get ready for this project. I have a year, most likely for the next.

One way or another, it will mean moving a lot of books. To my mind, this must be the year of saying good bye to many old friends. I don’t want to move all this stuff around only for my son to have to deal with it in another decade or so, depending on how long the Lord grants us health.

Retirement is on the not-too-distant horizon and I’m realizing that many of the books on work-related topics are becoming much less relevant to my life. At this stage, I probably could write a number of those books.

We have books in a storage closet I will probably never read. They are already boxed up, so these need to go.

I also think of books squirreled away behind other books. I couldn’t even tell you what they are, It suggests that they probably won’t be missed.

There are books I thoroughly enjoyed twenty or so years ago. Some I might think of re-reading, but most probably not. It sounds like they need to go.

It’s not only a lesson in facing how challenging physically this gets when one is approaching his eighth decade. It is really about facing aging and the stages of de-accumulating ahead until that final day when it all gets left behind. It’s about mortality, and that great struggle of readers summarized in our favorite mantra: “So many books; so little time.”

One thing is clear. Hauling all those boxes of books down and then back up stairs is not something I’m eager to do at once. If I am to avoid this Sisyphean task a year from now, I need to begin, once we get rid of the current stack. It occurs to me that if I worked at getting rid of a box a week, the job a year from now might be much more manageable.

There is also another compensation–remembering a life of reading–the conversations, the times shared, or the moments of delight or insight. It’s part of what we do more and more as we age–to remember our lives, to take stock, to celebrate the good. For readers, our books are a big part of that.

Now comes the task of figuring out what to keep…. I’ll save that for another blog.

Why Don’t Bookpeople Like Celebrities Who Promote Reading?

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President Barack Obama with Oprah Winfrey by U.S. Embassy, Jakarta, Public Domain

[An earlier version of this article appeared with the word “books” rather “reading” in the title. This may have given the impression that the article was about celebrity “blurbs” and endorsements, which it is not, rather than their efforts to promote child and adult literacy. ]

I post lots of stories about books at my Bob on Books Facebook page. There is one category that consistently gets negative reactions. And that is book recommendations by well-known public figures. The two individuals pictured above, along with Bill Gates, regularly post reading lists, and in Oprah’s case, she makes monthly book recommendations that are a windfall for authors and publishers. But if I post their recommendations, I can bet there will be negative or snarky comments.

I wonder why this is. I suspect that one reason is that really bookish people don’t like being told what to read by other people. Discovering books by ourselves, for ourselves, is part of the joy of reading for many of us. No one else knows us like us, and often, the choice of a new book is serendipitous.

Related to that is an independent streak that says, “I don’t want to be reading what everyone else is reading. Haruki Murakami summarizes it best: “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” 

I do think that some of the resistance to the figures I mentioned at the top has to do with controversy. Recommendations from a politician are inherently fraught–even though I’ve found a number quite interesting. As for Mr. Gates, the same thing. If you believe he promotes vaccines to implant microchips in your body (I do not), you will probably not be interested in his book recommendations. And Oprah is such a large personality that people seem to love her, hate her, or envy her.

While bookish people are not generally interested in celebrity recommendations, some seem less offensive. I don’t hear the same pushback for Jenna Bush Hager or Reese Witherspoon, who also have bookclubs. I’ve also found that some bookish people appreciate book recommendations from authors they like. And those promoting reading with children, people like LeVar Burton and Dolly Parton are, by and large, loved. My son’s generation grew up watching Reading Rainbow and loves books. And Parton’s Imagination Library has gifted over 200 million books to children worldwide.

While I suspect there are figures whose reading recommendations I might discount (say a Hitler or some mass killer), I am grateful for the public figures who have spoken up for reading. There are two simple facts. One is that while bookish people read a lot, many people in the U.S, where I live, don’t read at all. In the most recent year, 28 percent hadn’t read a single book, most only read a book a month or 12 in a year. The other is how profound the impact of books is for children, where as few as six extra minutes a day will boost reading performance. That’s why Parton’s program is so cool, in my estimation. Children get their own books every month! Here’s a great page with more such statistics. One thing that is clear to me–all the public figures named in this article have played an important role in encouraging reading–and talking about books!

I haven’t found information for all of those who promote books and bookclubs, but most are not making money off this but often investing money into it. In addition to readers, the ones who benefit are authors and their publishers. Some, like Reese Witherspoon, have special programs for unpublished, underrepresented women. 

So I’m glad to see their tribe increase. They are really doing the same thing I love doing–turning people on to reading by connecting them with good books–except they enjoy a bigger platform. I might not be as excited as they are about some books. But isn’t that true everywhere? I would like to see more men recommending books. This has tended to be a field dominated by women. I was encouraged to find that Radical Reads has a website just dedicated to celebrity book recommendations, with many from men.

So to my fellow booklovers: please stop bashing celebrities who recommend books. They are our friends, our allies, we all are really on the same team, promoting a more literate culture, Instead of negativity, we might ask what we are doing to promote literacy and a love of books. If nothing else, a bit of kindness would not be a bad thing…

A Question of Enough

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Do you want to raise the dander of a booklover? Just ask a question like this one I posted on my Facebook page the other day:

Some of the responses were ones of sheer incredulity:

“Is that even a question?”

“Need you ask? Really? LOL”

“Clearly a trick question.”

“Funny you would need to ask!”

It is a funny quality of booklovers that we can have a hundred (or a thousand) books waiting to be read, and then we see a book we’ve heard about, or is on a subject in which we are interested, or by an author we like and we don’t (we think) have it. One writer wrote that she had just taken a pile of books to the thrift store–and came home with a haul! One commenter summarized it best:

“I have loads of books, many I haven’t read yet, but the list I wish to buy keeps on growing.”

One page follower commented, “I would need to rent another apartment! LOL.” What is odd is that we run out of shelves, run out of storage space, and yet we buy more books. More than that, we discover in a moment of sobriety that we already have more books to read that we could possibly hope to read unless we live to be 200 or 500…if our eyes hold out that long.

There is a name for this. The Japanese call this tsundoku, the piling up of books that we aren’t reading. Others have referred to this as a “gentle madness.” Non-readers may just see this as hoarding but readers are adamant that “it’s not hoarding if it is books!” There is a paradox in all of this that some would say “yes” and “yes” to the question. We know we have enough and we would like to acquire more!

What is it then? I think in part for some of us, it is the intellectual curiosity stirred by our reading. Books beget books in the sense that often a book will be referenced that sounds interesting. And these days, it is too easy–five minutes on my phone and that book can be on its way to my doorstep. Sometimes it is FOMO–fear of missing out. We see or hear of a book that sounds interesting and we think, “I ought to snap that up, even if I can’t get to it right away.”

I think some of us just want to be set for the apocalypse. Booklovers had no problem during the pandemic–they just whittled down their TBR piles–until they ordered some more.

We hear “everything in moderation” and I would love to apply that to books. But the practice of moderation may be more challenging than the ideal. St. Augustine said, “Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.” At the other end of the spectrum, Oscar Wilde comments, “Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”

I think the idea of “enough” is closely related to the idea of contentment. And contentment to me seems the opposite to a kind of restlessness that is trying to fill up a sense of lacking, which I think helps explain everything from excess eating to our rampant consumerism. Sometimes, I think it is a hunger for ideas, a kind of craving or avarice for knowledge (but that may be my peculiar sin as a #5 of the Enneagram).

Saint Augustine also offered insight into how we may be free of restlessness. He wrote, “Our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.” Augustine is referring to God and while many may not agree that God is the answer to the restless heart, it may be worth considering the cause of our restless hearts that may lie beneath our never being able to have enough books.

In one sense, we all reach the place of having “enough” books when our hearts are finally at rest, beating their last beats. Personally, I’m not sure I want to wait that long. It is said, “blessed are the children, for they will inherit all the books.” I don’t think my son would count this a blessing. I have more than enough, to be truthful, and I want to learn how I might rest in that, and even discover how less is more. I’ll let you know how it is going…

Reading Reviews

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I asked a question recently about how people use reviews to choose books and discovered that a number vehemently refuse to read reviews. I could not help but mentally cry “ouch” because that is one of my principle activities on this blog, having written roughly 1700 reviews over the last ten years. I write reviews with the hope that they will both help people find books they will love, and also avoid books that aren’t for them. I love sharing what I read for that reason.

Some people don’t share that love, I think, because they think choosing books is a very personal choice and they don’t want anyone else meddling with that. Some don’t want to know too much about their books before they read them. And some have been burnt by reviews that led them to books they could not finish, they were so bad. Some consider reviewers part of a literary set removed from life. I respect all of those reasons.

I’m also aware that I’m heeding reviews all the time, even when I’m not reading them in papers, literary review publications, or blogs. Part of it is that I’m around friends who read and they tell me about books and I’m always learning about books I’m interested in because my friends are interesting! On the Facebook page I host, people talk about books they are reading. They are not reviews, but sometimes, a book stands out, particularly if a number are talking about it. As I write, I’m reading Demon Copperhead, by Barbera Kingsolver, and loving the book. I don’t think I read a formal review about it–I’ve just heard a number of people rave about it. I will review it when I’m finished but I bet at least one person reading this just added this to their mental “I’m going to check this out” list.

So reviews come in lots of forms. I do read a number of review publications as well, including the New York Times Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Christianity Today. I also read a variety of newsletters. One of my favorites is Hearts and Minds Booknotes from bookstore owner Byron Borger. He’s steered me to many interesting books, including a number I’ve purchased from his store.

Booksellers and librarians actually can be trusted reviewers, especially if they’ve gotten to know our reading tastes. They know what’s out there and can suggest authors we’ve not explored based on some of the ones we like. I usually find them much better than an algorithm!

Sometimes I like to read reviews of a book after I’ve read it. Often, my own thoughts are still forming and a mental dialogue with a reviewer will crystallize my own assessment of a book, whether I agree or not or have a different take altogether. Sometimes I find myself wondering, “did we read the same book?” That makes me ask why I am asking that. If several reviewers are touching on a particular issue in or aspect of a book, that suggests that I might want to notice it, and when I write about the book, give my own thoughts on the matter.

I don’t pay much attention to either Amazon or Goodreads reviews (although in the interest of full disclosure, I post some Amazon reviews and copy all my reviews to my Goodreads account). Frankly, there are just too many instances where the system has been corrupted, often to the hurt of authors.

I try to follow reviewers who have steered me well in the past. I’ve been heartened when I hear from someone who read a book I reviewed and found the book helpful and follows my reviews because of that. That’s what I and any ethical reviewer strive for.

Like most readers, I’m eager to find the next “good read.” Some are repeat buys of authors I love. I don’t need a review and I’ll likely buy their books until they disappoint me. But I like discovering new books and new authors. Reviews, whether via the informal buzz of friends or a well written review in a publication help me sift from the welter of books the ones I want to check out.

So what do I say to those readers who don’t read reviews? Basically, if what you are doing to find books you love is working, who am I to say you should do any differently? But if you want to learn about books you might not have heard of that you might like, the reviewer is your friend. Any of them are readers just like you and love to talk books with anyone who will listen. And that, I think, is one of the coolest things about the bookish community.

Reading and Introverts

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“Books — helping introverts avoid conversations since 1454.” (Quote from a meme, source unknown)

I’ve been thinking about the stereotype that most readers are introverts. It’s one that I think I became aware of in Susan Cain’s Quiet. In both the book and her TED talk video on the power of introverts, she talks about going off to camp with a duffle bag full of books and being surprised when that was not the idea of being at camp shared by the other girls. (Here is the video if you have not seen it.)

I can identify with Susan Cain. Even as an adult at business meetings, I find I have to squirrel away at some point and retreat to my books. Fitting the character of introverts, interacting with lots of people exhausts me and being alone with a book recharges me. It’s said that introverts don’t get ready for a party; they gather strength for a party. That would be me.

But is a love of reading exclusively an introvert characteristic? I’m not sure and I have not found any scientific studies of the matter. Anecdotally, I sense that many of the people who visit my Bob on Books Facebook page are introverts. One of the memes I posted recently that “blew up” showed a girl with glasses reading in what looks like a library with the statement “I was the kid that was actually excited when the teacher told us to read silently.” Over 54,000 have liked it with over 1.4 thousand leaving comments, all in sympathy with that idea. Typically, I’ll get ten to one hundred comments and several hundred likes. This struck a cord. There are plainly enough of us out there to justify the stereotype.

But I think part of the issue is that introverts and extroverts who read engage with reading differently, and we don’t hear about the extrovert part as much (as least as introverts).

  • Introverts feel recharged when they have a long time to read. Extroverts just need a short time with an interesting book.
  • Introverts enjoy thinking about a book. Extroverts enjoy talking about a book.
  • Introverts think of a good book as a conversation with the author. Extroverts think of good books sparking conversations with others.
  • Introverts don’t like external stimuli when reading. Extroverts don’t mind the stimuli–if the book is good it keeps your attention and if not, the breaks are good.
  • Introverts don’t want to read something because “everyone is reading it.” Extroverts like a popular book because it helps start conversations.

I realize these are generalizations and may not apply to all. But this gives you the sense that the two types are wired differently in their reading habits (for more on this, visit “Are You an Introverted or Extroverted Reader?” from which these contrasts were drawn). But extroverts can be readers. Oprah Winfrey is an outstanding example, sharing her love of reading with millions.

Nevertheless, reading lends itself to introverts. Some studies indicate that introverts and extroverts experience sound differently. No wonder the quiet of reading is restorative! Introverts like to focus on the inner world of their thoughts. Reading allows us to do that, but in a quiet conversation with other minds that also draws us out of ourselves, which can be healthy. Stories allow us to step out of ourselves and see things from another perspective, which may afford us fresh insights for the situations we inhabit in real life. Sometimes, introverts struggle to put into words with others what we are experiencing in our inner worlds. Books may give us those words, those “Aha” moments where we find someone giving voice to the inchoate within us.

The differences between introverts and extroverts do suggest some important things for helping us be both better readers and better humans. One is that we need to be sure to include reflection time for introverts when they read. Writing reviews, and the reflective thought that goes into that is important to me. For extroverts, making sure there are opportunties to talk about books is important. We also need to respect the different ways we read–how long we like to read, what we like to read, and the settings in which we talk with others about what we are reading. Maybe this is why introverts sometimes have a hard time sharing their love of reading with extroverts. We come to reading looking for different things and what interests me may be a non-starter for others.

The other thing about appreciating difference? Sometimes when we understand and respect differences, our worlds are enlarged. Others see things we do not, and our reflectiveness as introverts, when shared, may enrich the world of others and not just our own. Vive la difference!

Three Kinds of Readers

/ rtrube54 / 5 Comments
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I’ve been thinking about the different kinds of readers I encounter and the different ways we read. I suppose I could come up with a dozen types if I tried but I think I’ve got it down to three kinds. I know, if I were really simplifying things, I’d get it down to two–but you know the old saw: there are two kinds of people–those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t! At least on this topic I don’t. Curious?

The Easy Chair Reader. These are basically those who are looking for books that are TV in words–the stories just wash over them and rivet their attention. And if they don’t, they put them down. Or fall asleep. Some won’t touch very well-written stories that take some focus–psychological crime fiction for example, or a philosophical argument. I suspect these readers actually buy and borrow quite a few books and account for many of our best sellers. Most booksellers could not survive without them. I always am hopeful for this reader. At least they are reading and that is better than the non-reading population that rarely, if ever, pick up a book. And I wonder if at some point, they will tire of the same fare and branch out and explore books from other parts of the bookstore or library. I hope that someday, there will be questions about our world and our place in it, that will lead them to turn to writers who have probed these matters more deeply.

The Adversarial Reader. I wonder if this is a smaller group that might include literary theorists and critics, some reviewers, and religious zealots. These readers approach books determined to find what is wrong with them, why their ideas are wrong, or badly conveyed. You can tell you are in the presence of such a reader when you ask them what was the last thing they read that they enjoyed, and they just glare at you, wondering how you could ask such a supercilious or heretical question. This approach sometimes falls under the idea of the “hermeneutic of suspicion” that studies any narrative looking for the cleverly or poorly disguised exercise of power over some less fortunate human beings. No question that human beings have a sad record of doing such things, and perhaps we are never completely exempt of such behavior. But it seems pretty bleak. In the case of the zealot, anything written by those not a part of their group is suspect, and maybe even some that is! The difficulty of this kind of reading is that it is never open to meet a book on its own terms, to allow it to challenge the terms by which it is being read.

The Reader as a Discerning Lover. This is the person who practices a kind of golden rule of readers–they treat the author’s work as they would wish to be treated. They appreciate the hard work it takes to write a book and they give the attention they would wish for themselves to understand what the author is trying to do. They take delight when an author does this well–whether it is clarity of expression, development of characters who become real to us, a plot that draws us along, ideas that keep us thinking after we set the book down. They grow in understanding the writerly craft, recognizing allusions, metaphors, plot devices and more. They read discerningly, questioning when they find an argument or a character’s actions implausible. Such readers look neither for flawless perfection nor delight in searching out faults. They recognize that great thinkers have both challenging ideas and mistaken ones, and they may be different from ours! They realize that even great writers don’t always succeed to the same degree–some works of Dickens or Steinbeck or Ann Patchett are better than others–and yet we may enjoy each for what they are.

Actually, while I aspire to the third kind of reading, I suspect we all do all of these at some time. In an airport, a thriller that holds our attention through the endless announcements and distractions in the terminal and on the plane may be just the thing. It asks no more of us, nor we it. I’ve never read Mein Kampf but if I did, it would likely be as a hostile reader. The havoc the author and his ideas wrought are reprehensible. I might discern, but I cannot love. The most I could do is understand, as Churchill did, the appeal of these ideas, the fundamental danger they posed to human flourishing and world order, and that they must be resisted and not appeased.

To read as a discerning lover suggests that such reading is part of a lifetime of growth as human beings. We bring our past reading and life experience and intellect and moral discrimination to each new book we read. We are changed just a bit by each book we read. As we think about, discuss, and sometimes, as I do, write about the books we’ve read, we become part of a discussion that has been going on since people first put some form of stylus to some form of writing surface. In some form we consider what is true, good, and beautiful, and how we might live more truly, with greater goodness, celebrating and creating beauty in a world desperate need of such things.