12 Rules for Readers
Practical advice for book lovers
I confess that a reason for my Substack account is to get enough paid subscribers to subsidize my book addiction but I’m also glad for every free subscriber. Those of us who like to paw over ideas need to stick together.
And that brings me to reading. It is a charming habit. My neighbors seldom see me leave the house without a book in hand. They little know that it is a survival strategy. The thought of being stranded on an airliner or in a doctor’s or mechanic’s waiting room without a book can be scary.
Here are some reading ground rules which I suspect many of us share.
1. Don’t be a reading snob. Yes, Tolstoy’s War and Peace is better written and more thought-provoking than probably 98 percent of the other books, but all of us need great escapes. It is ridiculous that mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, and westerns are often regarded as lesser works. I’ll put some of Elmore Leonard’s crime novels up against a few classics. Books are either good or bad but most of them, despite their flaws, are in the former category. Why restrict your scope?
2. Don’t feel compelled to finish a book. I have a 30 Page Rule. If I’m not into the story after 30 pages, I put it down. The odds of the story being revived are remote. Sometimes ten pages will do. The words of a critic come to mind: “You do not need to eat an entire egg to know that it is rotten.”
3. Recognize that even great authors can write bad books. I’m naming no names but some of the biggies have written clunkers. It happens. I recall thumbing through the book of a major novelist in order to see if there was any acknowledgement that it was a first draft. It wasn’t.
4. Give second chances. You may not have liked Moby-Dick when you gave it a try at the age of sixteen, but it’s worth a second look when you’re older.
5. Acknowledge that classics are usually classics for a reason. I’m reluctant to zap a classic as being boring or indecipherable when there’s a good chance that I’m failing as a reader. With that in mind, I plan on giving Ulysses by James Joyce another look. Some classics I highly recommend are Bleak House by Charles Dickens; The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope; Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery; The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark; Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and anything by Jane Austen.
6. Periodically get out of your lane and read something wild and unusual. It helps your imagination and can be a lot of fun. Check out the following: Erasure by Percival Everett; Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman; The Price You Pay by Aidan Truhen; Middle Passage by Charles Johnson; A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby; The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler; and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 ½ by Sue Townsend. Great stuff.
7. Consider the timing. Don’t tackle a large book if you’re not going to have the time to do it justice. I confess that as I’ve grown older, I am wary of long books. This is not because of personal longevity. It is because I want that long book to justify the time invested. I’ve read a lot of books and have seldom wished a book were longer. But also consider the tone and what’s going on in your life. Graham Greene will always rank as a great writer but (and I speak from personal experience), A Burnt-Out Case should not be read while during law school.
8. Don’t dismiss the short books. Some of the best books out there are quite short. Animal Farm by Orwell. Heart of Darkness by Conrad. Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck. The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. A Christmas Carol by Dickens. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn. The list could go on. Publishers nowadays are said to shy away from novellas unless the author is well-known. That policy goes onto my long list of nitwitted business practices. Don’t make the mistake of the publishers.
9. Look for the relative unknowns. Jiri Weil’s novels about the Holocaust (Life with a Star and Mendelssohn Is on the Roof) deserve to be more widely read. Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War (The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy) should be much better known. An excellent book on writers and writing is Latest Readings by Clive James. [And while Clive is in mind, give his multi-volume autobiography a try. He was one of the funniest writers who ever lived.]
10. Hit the used bookstores. There is a very humbling aspect to used bookstores. They contain the work of once well-known authors who today are unknown. In many cases, you’ll be finding treasures. Just to name a few, try the novels of Edwin O’Connor, Robert Lewis Taylor, Eric Ambler, Katherine Ann Porter, Louis Auchincloss, and John O’Hara.
11. Look for a good series. The Slow Horses novels by Mick Herron are currently getting a lot of attention because of the television series. Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are worth considering. So too are the George Smiley novels by John le Carre. The Jack Aubrey-Stephen Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian are, I believe, a must-read.
12. Create a reading list. A list can save a lot of time whether you’re at the library or the bookstore. Trust me, as much as you think you’ll recall book titles, you won’t. The list also reveals if your reading habits have slipped into a rut. And, when you are done, let me know about your own reading rules.