The unreadables

In keeping with my previous post about which books I cleared out for the new year, here’s a post hoc rationale from ABE Books, where I alternate my book-buying dollars when not direct-depositing to Amazon. The reasons are interesting to me.

Number 1 is tied to number 5; “classics” are pretty much automatic “shoulds”. And frequently with number 4. Enormous isn’t automatically a show-stopper for me, although combining “enormous” with “novel” turns me off. I have no problem whatsoever with ponderous tomes of history or biography—although the current trend of having end notes instead of footnotes drives me nuts.

I've been told I'm the only person in the history of the world to take a thick history hardback to read on the beach in Saint Martin. Not sure about that, but my idea of an airplane read is more Dante than Dan Brown.

Number 3 isn’t too much of an influencer for me. I do get interested in a book after reading a review in the WSJ, Washington Post or LA Times, but lately I’ve taken to seeing if the library has them and going that route. I will admit that I have returned several I pursued in the past year without finishing them, so that was definitely beneficial to my budget and shelf space.

Number 6—okay, so my stack has kind of imitated Topsy. I’ve got about nine waiting now, including Joe Queenan’s memoir about life with his abusive father. I know it’ll be well written; I just have to steel myself to get into it. Right now I’m delving into La Bella Lingua, with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—both Christmas gifts. The former is, as you would deduce, about Italian; the latter an epistolary novel. Then there’s Leslie Caron’s memoir and The Blackout Book…well, you get the drift

I just have to keep away from the book review pages and work assiduously on my stack.

Numbers 7 and 10 aren’t applicable; I don’t spend a whole lot of time in actual shops any more (except on Charing Cross Road in London), nor do I know anyone who works in one.

Also, since I’m not in class or a reading club, I don’t have to worry about number 9.

As for number 8, well—while knowing someone’s a good writer helps filter the purchase, it’s the subject matter that usually entices.

And since most of these reasons are clearly geared to fiction, they’re all a big N/A, since I find a lot of the stuff annoying and the ones I do like (detective stories) I usually get from the library.

I will say that when I was clearing out last week the biggest pile of discards were novels. probably 80% were “never going to read again”; the rest were “oh, pooh—life’s to short to even think about this one.”

It’s quite liberating, actually.