Can you recommend a book for me?

As a reader you come accross this from time to time, right? Since you read so much you must be able to recommend a book for me, right? Wrong! Well, sort of.

Sure I read over 200 books every year and my taste isn't too selective, I read pretty much anything as long as it's not horror and even then I occasionally read a scary book I didn't initially realise was scary. I like literary fiction, biographies and autobiographies, historical fiction and factual books, classics, some fantasy (I've specialized in fantasy that involves libraries and librarians or books in any form) etc. The only types of books I'm not overly keen on are poetry, short stories (although I do read them too), the afore mentioned horror stories and romance novels (and yes, you guessed it, I sometimes read them too).

So with all those books under my belt why wouldn't I recommend a book for you?

As many tastes as there are books

Cataloging my books I use Goodreads. It's one of the go to apps for us bookish people and it not only helps you keep track of what you've read but also what's out there, what your friends are reading and what others think of the books you're reading or thinking of reading. And herein lies the problem.

With millions of books out there a lot of them seem to be highly appreciated by the Goodreads community. Say you've just finished a book and you didn't like it very much. In fact you may have hated is to much that you wanted to dnf it mid read but because you don't not finish books you struggle to the bitter end and the minute you turn the last page you open your Goodreads app to log in your latest read (got to keep those reading challenge stats up to date!). 

You're still grumpy from not liking the book much but what do you notice on your reading app? The book has an average score of almost 4 out of 5!! This is crazy, you think to yourself. Am I the only one who hated this book? After a short scroll you finally find a like minded reader who's also given the book 2 stars and is listing all the problems you had with it in their review. This makes you feel a tiny bit better but you're still clearly in the minority. "A masterpiece!", "This book will make you weep!", "A beautiful tale!" cry all the other reviews.

Why would you recommend this to me?!

Some, if not the majoroity of the reviews of the books on Goodreads are reviews on give away books, which I'm sure affects the content of the review. Perhaps not everyone feels obliged to the publisher who's sent them a free copy, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people do. I know I would. But it still doesn't explain why everyone seems to love every book out there. And in all fairness, they dont.

I think on Goodreads, unlike in other online platforms people are more eager to give good reviews than bad. If you like a book you want to tell the world! We just have different tastes and like to read different books.

Which brings me back to my original dilemma of recommending books. I only ever recommend books to my closest friends whos tastes in literatjure I'm already familiar with so I can be pretty sure I won't make a huge mistake in my recommendation. And even then I might go horribly wrong.

My best friend and I have been recommending books, films and tv programs to each other for decades now and even we sometimes don't understand each others tastes. Does it matter if you recommend a book your friend won't like? Perhaps not. But I don't know if I ever get over my best friend not liking Mark Z. Danielewski's The House of Leaves, my favourite book at the time. She absolutely hated it and let me know it. I've not been able to re-read the book ever since, I worry I might not like it anymore.

So you can ask me for recommendations, but the most you will get is: "I really liked this, but you might not". Which is totally unfair as I'm always on the lookout for something new to read. Can you recommend a book for me?

Old friends

A few years ago I came across a book called Michael Tolliver lives. A book by an old, old favourite of mine: Armistead Maupin. Needless to say I bought the book at once, but then it took me a while to start reading it.

Back in the good old day of my glorious youth, me and my friend read all the Tales of The City books back to back. We were mesmerized by the atmosphere of the 80’s San Francisco the books portrayed. The last standing bastion of the 60’s hippie movement, the openly gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered people who form the chore of the books. Mrs Madrigal, Michael aka Mouse,  Mona, Brian, the oh so innocent Mary Ann who's innocence soon vaporizes as the lure and reality of  San Fransisco hits her. Not to mention the minor characters who from time to time slide into the inner circle; Michaels true love Jon, the spicy old lady Mother Mucca who's a lot more than a stranger on a bus, The Halcyon family with their skeletons in the closet and sometimes out of it...

Looking back, those bygone days seem like a golden time, one that can never be lived again. Not in the traditional sense of “oh, life was just so much better when we were young” but because of the almost endless flow of Armistead Maupin books. 

And now it looks like those happy days are here again! After Michael Tolliver Lives Maupin has written two more books in the series. Thus enabling us true fans to revisit our good old friends and see what they're up to. And I can tell you they’re up to a lot! Just like they used to. 

Reading tips from the beach

Reading tips from the beach

So there I was, minding my own business, reading a book and enjoying the peace and quiet. The sun was shining, the waves were high and the holiday was well on the way in that perfect place where you’ve settled into a routine and aren’t worried about going home yet. Out of the corner of the eye, something caught my attention. A book! Someone had gone (swimming?) and left their book on the blanket.

Now if you’re a reader like me you know what it means to spot a book. On a shop window, on the train, on a beach… You just have to take a peak to find out if it’s a book you’ve read or a book you might be interested to read, or if it’s just rubbish – in which case you can feel superior by your choice of book (which to the other person probably looks just as rubbish).

The book was called What Alice Forgot and it immediately made me think about Alice in Wonderland. Had she forgotten something in Wonderland? Did she forget to take something with her? Perhaps she’d forgotten about Wonderland all together? Also, I’m one of the people who get lured into a book by an interesting cover (needless to say this is not the best way to spot good books) and this one looked interesting enough. Well, I was intrigued.

I went on reading my own book (funny, for the life of me I can’t remember what it was called) and only after a while realized the owner of the book had come back and was reading it. Now I’m not the kind of person who approaches strange people on the street. At all. Unless in dire need, and even then very cautiously. Not because I’m scared of people but because I think people are entitled to their privacy – especially when reading. But really, who was this Alice? Did she have anything at all to do with that Alice? Was it a good book? Should I read it? So I braced myself.

The woman reading What Alice forgot couldn’t have been nicer. She didn’t mind me bothering her one bit and was very helpful in telling about it. No, it had nothing to do with Wonderland but was a story about a woman who has amnesia and has forgotten about the last 10 years of her life: her children, the divorce proceedings she’s started, her enthusiasm about exercise…

I did like what I heard and so once I was in reach of the internet, I quickly acquired the book.

So did the book live up to the expectations? Surprisingly well, I have to say. Sure, it’s what you might call a romantic book with tons of feelings and crying and unexpected romantic surprises. And, obviously, a happy ending. But as a representative of the genre it was surprisingly well written, an easy read, and the characters felt reral-ish, not the stereotypical romantic novel characters you might expect. So I really am very happy with mounting up the courage to disturb a stranger and even more for trusting their recommendation. I think I will look into other stuff from Liane Moriarty!

Living room theatre

So there I was, outside a strange house on a perfectly ordinary Thursday evening, about to enter a stranger’s apartment. I made my friend meet me at the corner in case I got cold feet. We were about to go to a one man theatre performance taking place in the performer's living room and were feeling a little edgy.

We weren't alone though. The little group of women huddling on the street outside the doorway looked just as hesitant as we. Being in a group gave us enough strength and together we climbed to the sixth floor and towards a new experience.

Being in a strange house is almost always interesting. It can be uncomfortable, it can be pleasant, but nearly always it’s inspiring too see how other people live – how they decorate, what their home smells like, what books they read etc. Being in someone’s home as a spectator was not so different to being a regular guest, but it did bring extra layers to the visit. This type if a performance could have been a truly inspiring experience.

On arrival we were greeted very warmly by the performer himself and were escorted to the living room. The early arrivals had a choice of sitting on actual chairs or on the sofa, the latecomers had to settle for cushions on the floor.

It's highly improper to take photographs at a performance, so these are my books.

And this is my library - not his.

There were quite a few pauses in the performance. You know, silences. Long silences. Uncomfortable silences. Regular silences. During which I noticed there was a book called Silence tucked away at the back of the bookcase. Coincidence? As I looked around the room my eyes kept wandering  more and more to the bookcase. There were books on love - the performance was up to a point about love. I noticed some books that the performer and I shared (Shakespeare’s completed works – but everyone owns that one, right?) and tried to read the titles of the rest of them. I noticed that there weren't that many books after all and got to thinking how and why he'd picked the ones that he did have.

The inspiring aspect of the performance was how the room became a set. Things you thought were just decoration turned out to be a part of the performance and therefore constituted a set. I have a friend who's something of an expert on site-specific performance and I kept thinking what she would make of this - this set up I think would have been right up her alley.

1,5 hours passed like 2 and afterwards as we walked home in the cold, dark wintry night we wondered what we learned from what we'd just seen. Probably the most important lesson was not to avoid something just because its something new and unfamiliar. Next time I go see a performance in someone's house I'll be a lot less nervous!

Secret vices

I recently came across an an article about people posting lists of books they claim to have changed their lives. It seems that, like in social media in general people tend to list books they'd like to have changed their lives rather than the books that actually have. In short, it's cooler to list books that are difficult rather than books you actually like to read. So on the list you're more likely to find David Foster Wallace than John Grisham...

Now I've done my fair share of difficult reading, having muddled through the aforementioned Foster Wallace as well as Joyce's Ulysses and some B.S. Johnson just to mention a few. Now none of these books I felt changed my life one bit, I found them difficult and at times just plain boring. Proust's mammoth epic In search of Lost Time on the other hand kept me in its grip from the second book onwards right till the end, so I haven't found all "difficult" books equally difficult.

But when it comes to really enjoying yourself with a book it's best to find one that keeps you entertained and reels you in from the first page. The search for that book can be a painstaking job and so sometimes the best thing to do is just to fall back on old favorites. Since most of us try to look cool we never boast on our light reading, but...

For me, the best thing I can do on a hot summers day is to pick up a friendly, familiar detective story and just lazy my day away in the sun reading about a neat murder taking place in a nice upper class English environment. None of the new psychological, violent, dark murder mysteries for me! I'm all for your Agatha Christie's and Conan Doyle's and Ngaio Marsh's and Dorothy L. Sayers' etc.

It's not cool to like Agatha Christie & co. Not at all. Most people who like to read, I've found, have a disliking towards Christie, saying her books are not that well written nor realistic. Well, the so called realistic crime novel just is a little too much for me, especially while enjoying a relaxing summer's day. The true value of a nice Agatha Christie lies in the complete harmlessness of the books - the murder is always neat, the suspects well behaved and you can trust there to be plenty of soothing tea.

Now am I saying Agatha Christie changed my life? Perhaps not. At least not in the sense that I’d gotten any deep life lessons from her books. But perhaps reading Agatha Christie has changed me in the sense that her books have helped me get some tough times. Reading a familiar book is like comfort food, you know how it makes you feel and mostly that’s happy and comforted. 

On a regular day I can read a “difficult” book like nobody’s business but then comes the odd day when you just need to go back to your old friends. It could be because the sun is shining and you want to just enjoy yourself or it could be that you just need to feel safe with a book you know. 

For some reason it seems more socially acceptable to watch the Christie adaptations on TV than reading the actual books (Kenneth Branagh had taken Christie to a whole new level) but I'm not one to care for social pressure, I promote my guilty secret openly! No TV adaptations for me - I prefer the real thing.

Best selling isn't (always) best written

A while back I started reading J.K.Rowling's Casual Vacancy. I bought the book ages ago but have never gotten round to reading it. I guess at first because I had other books to read but later I realized I kept putting it off because it got such bad reviews. I was browsing my bookcase the other day and the book caught my eye - I thought maybe it was time to give it a try.

Well, I was wrong. I'm now on page 52 and am very iffy about ever finishing the book. I can't even put my finger on the main problem since there are just so many. First of all the so far only interesting character died on page 3. What has followed is an army of unpleasant people acting in unpleasant ways and swearing a lot. I don't usually mind swearing (in some books it's almost mandatory) but here it felt like Rowling is trying to prove that she's not just a children's novelist and that writing for adults means that you have to use all the nasty words you've ever heard on the school playground when you went to pick your children from school.

Reading Casual Vacancy made me remember that the same thing happened with Harry Potter. Not that they were swearing a lot but that the books weren't too well written. The story was interesting enough to keep you hooked and the whole magical world sucked you in, but just so much of it could have done with a nice, sharp editing.

Sadly the problem of the not so high quality of writing is often true of many  bestsellers. It seems that when someone manages to write something compelling and artistic, which is perhaps written in an interesting way, it seldom becomes the #1 bestseller. For some reason the great reading public doesn't seem appreciate well written stories as much as it does a dramatic plotline. Don't get me wrong, I can absolutely see value in a catching story but why do the danbrowns of this world always manage to produce such poorly written books?

So now the good (or bad, as it seems) people of Pagford are gathering dust on my night stand. After the Potter experience I'm pretty sure the poor writing will remain but there will be few flying brooms or moving staircases in Pagford so I'm relatively sure the book will stay put where it is until the day I feel it should go back to its original place on the bookcase

And while we're on the subject: I know I'm a bit of a nitpicker, but am I the only one who finds it irritating that the name of Rowling's village is almost the same as Sirius Black's nickname in Harry Potter? How hard can it be to make up a name for a village? Padfoot/Pagford. I mean, seriously. Sigh.

Browsing books(ales)

The annual book sales began again this January.  Like in any sale in this one too the early bird catches the bookworm, so the trick to making the best finds should be to be at the spot as soon as the salespeople start loading the books on the shelves. Only this year it turns out they do it gradually, adding a few books at a time to a number of categories, including my personal favorite, paperback fiction! So the jury's still out on the question on who catches the worm this year - possibly the patient buyer who has time to come back to the store over and over again.


Now your annual book sale is the thing the serial reader most looks forward to each year, but it's not without it's pitfalls. The theory of the sale sounds perfect, right? Pristine books for half off with as wide a selection as you can hope for? The reality is never as rosy, for me at least there are two major things to be on the lookout for.

First of all the books on sale tend to be the ones I've already bought. If they're  by my favorite authors, I naturally bought them as soon as they came out. And if I was able to restrain myself and wait for the paperback to come out there's little hope I'll find anything really interesting on that shelf by the time the books are on sale.

Now the other problem also has to do with the selection, but from a different perspective. The shelves are bursting with lovely books that judging by the cover all look SO interesting. But as I have no idea who the writers are, there's a very real chance I end up with a bag full of silly books that are just poorly written. The danger is even greater come summer when the left over books form the winter sale are half off from their earlier half off price.

The cookbook find - highly recommend it!

A few years back I went completely nuts and bought two bag fulls of paperbacks for a pittance and am now wondering whatever possessed me. The only one of the books I've so far actually managed to read was an extremely bad detective story involving a lost Shakespeare's manuscript. The other's have, after a long futile wait to be read, been alphabetized onto my bookshelf with little hope of ever being read. The only ones I remember buying are Where The Wild Things Are by Dave Eggers and The Last King of Scotland, both of which I actually might read one of these days except that I wonder if the Last King won't be as violent as the film was (I'm not overly keen on violence...).

 This year I managed to avoid most of the pitfalls and only fell for a cookbook recommended by a friend over an extremely yummy dinner cooked from this very cookbook, and a pilates book, which may end up gathering dust on the shelf of the couch potato that I am.

So my point being? I have no point! Happy sales, everyone!