While I’m not a huge fan of lists like “the top ten best books of our time!” or “The 100 Books you Should Read Before you Die!”, you can’t deny the practicality of having a “most read” list. On the one hand, I hate to choose which books “count” and which books don’t (it just smacks of pretention and arbitrary snobbery). On the other hand, it’s tough to pick out something once you’ve left the world of summer reading lists and curricular assignments. Having some rules and guidelines can be helpful.
But like Laura Palmer, from The L. Palmer Chronicles, I worry about canonical “must read” lists. As she explains, they impart a competitive spirit, not an intellectual one, feel arbitrary, and skew priorities. As she so elegantly puts it:
Apparently, when we arrive in the afterlife, our first thought will be, “But I never finished reading Animal Farm!”
I admit to feeling something like that – wishing I could live forever so I could read and learn everything. Alas that I cannot! And so, Palmer asks, “How should we choose what books to read?” Her answer is excellent:
I believe we should find our own path through the wondrous maze of books available to us. We should also use lists and reviews as trail maps to find the vistas and highlights others talk about. As we walk this path, we should keep our eye out for exploration and discovery. With our eyes open, wondrous things may be found.
Also, in the midst of reading great literary works, it must be remembered that reading can be fun. This is why, every so often, I put down an Important Book and pick up the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series. This is like mint and chip ice cream after a swim on a hot day.
Personally I tackle the question in the same way I would tackle building the syllabus of a new course. Once I get a good starting point, I try to think in general ideas. What would deepen this perspective? What would challenge it?
How it works:
First, you pick up something that looks exciting, and from there look for your next few reads. The starting point can be anything. A car repair manual. A magazine article. A short story. Anything.
Then, figure out what you found most interesting about this book, and what you’d like to explore. If you start with a fiction book, look for a non-fictional counterpart, like a biography of the author, or a historical tract on the time period. Find a detail in the book to research, look up recipes the characters make, find a counter-point piece, or read an academic work on it. Find similar books, and then search for works on the genre in general. I’ll even toss some movies and radio programs in there. The directions you could go are endless, so I tend to pick something thematic in order to narrow things down.
Sample:
Let’s say I start with The Hunger Games. There are a lot of themes that would make for interesting syllabi, so the hardest part is picking one. I chose to explore the political implications of hierarchical societies and exploitative resourcing. In our terms, that’s imperialism and colonialism. If you read The Hunger Games and you think about reality television, that’s fine too – you can’t really pick a wrong theme.
First I’d want to get a general sense of the literature on colonialism. I like A Very Short Introduction series for this purpose, but a general internet search would probably yield a sufficient enough overview.
After that, I’d probably want some history. A lot of the options would be too general, so I’d look over the book jackets and online reviews until I find one that piques my interest and speaks to my theme most clearly (in this case, developing power structures and seeking natural resources). My pick here is Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.
Since Hochschild makes a lot of references to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, I’d read that next (I recommend getting an edition that includes Conrad’s “Congo Diaries”). Here, I’d probably pick up a few new themes to chase. I’m a big proponent of reading the supplemental materials in a book – introduction, preface, etc – in order to help find these themes. Since I’m a philosophy student, I’d likely end up looking for the ideological reasoning behind colonization and its critiques, turning to Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, and Aime Cesare’s Discourse on Colonialism.
From there, I could continue on, double back to the start to follow a different theme (maybe looking into dystopian young adult fiction and moving onto Divergent), or just take a break and find a whole new starting point.
The most important thing for me is to follow my impulse – I try not to force myself through a book I think I’m supposed to read (unless, of course, I really do have to read it for some reason). I have a lot of these little syllabi, ranging from “serious and important” all the way to “frivolous and silly”. My goal is always to find the track that will keep me reading rather than the one that will look impressive or work through some “official” canon.
Ironically, doing this often leads me back to those “must read” books in the end – except when I get there, I’m excited about it.
5 thoughts on “How to Choose What to Read”
SelfAwarePatterns
I’m a big fan of the “A Very Short Introduction” books. They’re often excellent resources to get a quick overview of a subject. I also find the “Teach Yourself” books to be enormously useful.
http://www.teachyourself.com/
Their books on philosophy and ethics were extremely good starting points for me in those subjects.
One of the things I’ve found when choosing which books to read, is that you often won’t get the benefit of many of them until you’ve had some life experiences. I remember being forced to read stuff as a teenager that I just didn’t get, but in my 30s, when I went back to some of it, I found to have profound insights on life. ‘The Art of War’ stands out as the best example of this for me.
Michelle Joelle
I definitely agree! That’s why I like to find things organically – ill come to them when I am ready for them. I don’t know if this would work for everyone, but it works for me.
L. Palmer
First, thanks for the mention.
Second, that seems a really interesting way to read. You’d definitely build a great context for the books you read and what they are made from.
Michelle Joelle
I personally find it much more enjoyable to dig into a new text with some context, even if its just a guiding question. The “seed” for this sample even came from a specific context – I had to see what everyone was talking about! That’s not to say I can’t pick something up out of the blue and get sucked in, but it’s definitely more likely for me to build grander narratives.
medievalotaku
In my own case, I feel as if the classics of literature and contemporary literature play off each other. Finding connections between contemporary literature and older works is one of the things which makes reading fun. As a recent example, I could not help but notice the similarities to Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes in the hero of Wizard for Hire by Jim Butcher. It seemed to provide a vision of what these characters would be like if they had magical powers–of course, some people have already accused Holmes of that!
But, I would say that reading the classics is a must. (I counted 22 books on that list of 100.) Without them, we miss so many interesting allusions. On the other hand, without reading contemporary works and seeing how modern authors interpret ideas found in the older works, understanding the archaic mindset of past authors would be much more difficult.