Ask Me…
The tables and shelves in my local bookstore are arranged to help me select my next great read. There is a section of bestsellers, book club favorites, new and noteworthy books, and staff picks. As if that’s not enough, a clerk standing behind the counter wears a round button on her lapel that says, “Ask me for a recommendation.”
Though I would be curious to know what she would recommend, three people are vying for her attention, so I opt to browse. I look through the fiction and classics section, through memoir and biography, through diet and health, stopping at the bargain section. I’m drawn to a paperback with a New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books stamp-of-approval. The cover of the book is colorful and appealing—a silhouette of child alongside a man with a cane, a green backdrop illustrated with flowers and swirls and birds. The title draws me in, the synopsis on the back catches my interest, and several well-known writers and publications have endorsed it with complimentary blurbs. I open the book and read the first sentence: “Big Angel was late to his own mother’s funeral.” I’m immediately hooked. Who is Big Angel? Is he intentionally or accidentally late to his mother’s funeral? What happened to his mother? I anticipate with pleasure reading The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea.
How do you select the next book you’re going to read?
I asked my sister, Carmel, who tells me she picks books based upon her mood—whether she wants to read something light-hearted, motivational, or by the theme of the story. Though I appreciate most genres of books, of late, I’m in the mood for an engrossing book of fiction, a story that will take me away, teach me something about another culture or time in history, capture me with its prose. Humor always appeals, even more so, a book that straddles the line between humor and pathos.
I picked up The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald, another bargain book, because I liked its catchy title (a book about recommending books!), but it was reading the opening paragraph that sold me:
The strange woman standing on Hope’s main street was so ordinary it was almost scandalous. A thin, plain figure dressed in an autumn coat much too gray and warm for the time of year, a backpack lying on the ground by her feet, an enormous suitcase resting against one of her legs. Those who happened to witness her arrival couldn’t help feel it was inconsiderate for someone to care so little about their appearance. It seemed as though this woman was not the slightest bit interested in making a good impression on them.
I’m captured by the presumptuous voice of the narrator, and want to read more, predicting that by the end of the novel the “thin, plain figure” will turn out to be a person the residents of Broken Wheel will come to be admire.
Book reviews are a great way to find your next read whether The New York Times, NPR, or Kirkus or in on-line communities like Goodreads and Bookstagram. A laudatory book review is how my sisters’ book club found Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, a work of historical fiction that imagines how William Shakespeare came to write Hamlet. The fact that the novel won the National Critics Book Award, The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2020, and The Women’s Prize for Fiction made it all the more appealing. My sister, Una, and sister-in-law, Pat, tend to go with their book club picks though Pat also participates in an author series called A Moveable Feast, and often reads the featured author’s book.
One book begets another and another. Hamnet led me to a fascinating second book by Maggie O’Farrell, a memoir titled I Am I Am I Am, about the author’s seventeen close encounters with death. (Better odds than a cat!) In fact, the book is more a celebration of life, than an examination of death, and I will certainly seek out more of O’Farrell’s work.
Mary, another sister, tells me she selects books strictly by author, and like her, I will read anything by my favorites, eagerly anticipating Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days and Lily King’s Five Tuesdays in Winter. I believe I’ve read Elizabeth Strout’s full oeuvre, some of her books more than once, and can’t wait to dig into her latest, Oh, William!
It’s said that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but that’s not necessarily true. My niece, McCaffrey, an artist, likes to browse used bookstores, and selects old books with the prettiest covers. I’ve read that book publishers put much time and consideration into the cover of a book because, as Mac’s experience shows, it can influence sales.
The cover, the title, the blurbs, or a combination of all three can sell a book—I couldn’t resist Sherman Alexie’s wonderfully titled The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a coming-of-age story about a budding cartoonist (illustrations included!) growing up on the Spokane Indian reservation. I was curious—how can one be a part-time Indian, and how come ‘true’ needs to be qualified? Amy Sedaris gave it a blurb, saying, “I laughed consistently from beginning to end.” So did I.
Sometimes influencers—Oprah, Reese, GMA—can sway me in my selection, especially if something else factors in. I purchased The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, which had a “Read with Jenna” stamp-of-approval on its cover, but also because of the synopsis:
In June 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter…Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California, where they can start anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car.
This premise intrigued me. Since I loved both of Towles previous novels, A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility, I was sold.
When I posed the question to my sister, Helen, she said she also selects her next book by reading the synopsis. My niece, Lani, a working mother with two grade-schoolers, chooses books based upon what’s available through her library on Kindle, while a neighbor tells me she gets all her books through what’s available at our local library.
I heard a statistic that the foremost way people select a new book to read is by word of mouth. I believe it. Just yesterday, another neighbor stopped me on my afternoon walk and recommended The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner. Coincidentally, the book showed up this morning in a newsletter from a women’s fiction group I participate in. A double recommendation—I will definitely have to check it out.
I keep a TBR list of recommendations by family and friends on my I-phone. I read American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins because of a recommendation by my brother’s girlfriend, Leigh, also an avid reader. Published in 2019, it’s a relevant story about a woman and her son who are forced to flee Acapulco to America because of threats from a drug cartel. That book led me to an earlier work by Cummins, The Outside Boy, which imagines the life of an Irish tinker child. If you were to ask me for a recommendation, I’d certainly suggest it.
By sampling the exquisite prose or by reading a glowing review, because a book matches your mood, through a recommendation, or simply by following your curiosity, how do you go about selecting your next great read?