On Picking Books

I am currently not reading anything.

Well. For a given value of not reading anything. I actually have several books unfinished that I'm going to finish, honest - Hackwith's Invisible Library, Crowley's Aegypt, a factual book called Outlaws Inc, one of Buroker's Emperor's Edge novels, a wuxia novel with elves - but none of them that I intend to pick up and read some point today. I would like to start something, probably a re-read, but this involves me making a choice.

Which is where the problems start.

Many of my family members will tell you I'm indecisive. This isn't true. 60% of the time I just don't care and also don't care to deal with the backlash of picking wrong for someone else. 35% of the time it's a hard decision that takes time and internal deliberation. 5% of the time I pick just fine. Nothing indecisive about that. And that doesn't even count work, where I've no problem at all!

Picking a book to read usually falls into the 35%.

Let's start with the process by which a book gets onto my bookshelf (or table, or floor, or one of the countless places I stick books to my wife's frustration) before getting onto the whole picking a re-read thing.

Very few weeks go by when I don't look at acquiring a book in some form. If its not visiting a book shop (monthly), it's nipping into a second hand book shop (monthly), or looking at the book share at the work (formerly daily), or going to the library (every time I'm no longer allowed to renew), or looking at NetGalley (bi-monthly), or books posted in deal threads on forums (weekly), or even the odd review request in my email (trick question, I don't read my email, I need a better way to get these). And if its none of those, then there's good old fashioned looking up a book thanks to word of mouth or recommendations or being friends of some sort with the author. 

Which reminded me that Blackwing and The Court of Broken Knives are also on my started but in abeyance list.

Back to the topic though  - the point is I look at far far too many books to ever read them all. Frankly I buy and borrow too many books to ever read them all. I am picky to begin with but that knowledge makes me even pickier.

My first contact with a book will be one of the following:

a) Someone talking about it, online or otherwise
b) The title and author
c) The title, author and cover

Let's skip over A for now. B and C - mainly B - are my most common first contacts with a book. I'll walk along a shelf, I'll click on a link with a name (or not) - the name is pretty much all I've got to be going with unless the author has an awesome sounding name. Is there anything that draws me in a title? Honestly, sometimes generic works better than anything fancy. I once picked up a book called The Horse Lord because I felt pretty safe assuming it'd be my type of fantasy. But generally I'm attracted to books with a hint of poetry or humour to their title. I picked up Kerr's Daggerspell based on the name. Ditto Hughart's Bridge of Birds. Incongurity works too - I'm pretty sure I picked up Davies' The Silver Pigs as a kid for this reason. Turn-offs? I guess maybe certain overused words. I very nearly didn't buy Barker's Age of Assassins because meh assassins.

The book cover, if I'm honest, doesn't play a huge part. I once noticed a book thanks to its fantastic art on Twitter... and I can't remember the name of the book in question. A lot of the books on my shelf have very simple abstract designs. 

Shortly after any of those introductory points comes the blurb. That's the universal. And honestly, it often means quite a lot to me, which is weird. Sometimes I'm just looking for an absence of "oh dear". But often I'm looking for some sign that the author is with me on some wavelength. A hint of humour. A tease of mystery. Or just a clever bit of phrasing. Some flavour. I've put down so many forgotten books because there was no sense of flavour. Flavour can be very simple:

"It is the only route by which an army can pass through the mountains. Protected by six outer walls, it was the stronghold of the Drenai Empire. Now it is the last battleground, for all else has fallen before the Nadir hordes. 

And the only hope rests on the skills of that one old man."

The prose is stark, matter of fact, straight to the point. It has a flavour. I can't recall if I read Legend's blurb all those years ago but it would have got my attention.

We then get to the all important stage of reading a few pages. I don't always do this - Amazon book sales, books by friends, and library books by highly reputed authors often skip this stage - but frankly I should. I don't know if I'm abnormally attached to prose style and voice but if I don't like it, I don't like the book. That's probably a better than 99% accurate prediction. There's probably an author where I was lukewarm on their voice but got used to it and learned to like it. Give me a year and I might remember who. This is the real acid test. Everything before this is me whittling down the numbers to manageable levels.

Now that I've waffled long enough - how do I pick which book out of the huge pile to read? Which re-read am I going to do this time?

I think it's here that people talking about a book really matters to me. Chat might get me to pay attention but it would get the sale - the steps above are what does that for me. Even if one of the people whose taste I regard as being very close to my own raves about a book it doesn't matter that much as to whether I'll buy it. But in terms of keeping a book in my mind and ramping up my enthusiasm for it once I've got a taste, it really does matter. Which is why it's always good to keep talking about books, and not just whoop it up at their release and forget.

Has anybody been cooing over anything in on my shelves recently? No. Bugger. Next step. Is there anything corresponding to my mood? I'm toying with the idea of picking up Cornwell's The Winter King but it feels a little too fresh in my mind, a little too remote and long winded. Similarly, I could carry on a re-read of The Empire Trilogy but again, a little long winded. More over, I'm not in the mood for the weirdnesses of the romantic relationship there. Maybe a Discworld or a Sharpe? I'd like to re-read Age of Assassins but for some reason the idea of re-reading on kindle really doesn't work for me. The answer is I'll probably only decide when at the shelves.