Who Tells You What To Read?

Who Tells You What To Read?

There’s been a lot of action in the blogosphere lately about Oprah’s choice of Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” for her virtual book club.

I’m too smart or too cowardly to make an editorial comment on the choice, the chooser, or the much-ado-about-nothing (although that last one sounds a bit editorial). But the kerfuffle did make me think about all the people you know and don’t know, who tell you which books to read.

Who to trust? – that’s the question isn’t it? Who knows books and you well enough to act as a matchmaker?

Who knows what you value, you really value? Or what gives you pleasure, your most secret pleasure? Who understands your English comprehension well enough to know how easily you can read a Faulkner or a Hiaasen for that matter?

Do you look for books you can treasure forever or do you pitch them in the first trash can you find once you’re finished with them – you’ve read the last page or you’re too bored to turn the next one? Who knows all that about you?

Do even your best book-reading buddies know you well enough to recommend your reading material? Anyway, you get the point.

Your friends have only a slim shot at suggesting a book that you’ll love as much as they did. And even if the NYT has been helpful in the past – or any other source that’s reliable (as in “reliable sources say…) – nobody will bat a thousand.

The best way to pick what you’ll read next is to be a real reader, to read a lot.

Then you can sniff out a good book like a bloodhound on a scent. You’ll almost know it by its cover and you’ll certainly know what you want to spend your time on after reading the first few (free) pages in your bookstore or library.

Reading is such an investment of your time…make it count.