Reading for Others, Part One
Dear Reader,
This will not be about recommending reads to others. Well, it will kind of be that, but not really. I couldn’t say whether it’s a subset or simply a near relative to the recommended read. In a certain sense, it’s almost the opposite, as you’re reading in part to potentially save others from reading the thing you’re previewing for them.
(Oh, I should note this isn’t reading in place of others. It isn’t reading to summarize books for them, giving them the highlights and so forth, a phenomenon I toggle between calling the CEO read and the Ivy League read… Anyway, that’s a different sort of reading, similar in some faint respects, but significantly different. And yes, I do hope to cover it eventually.)
Reading for others is essentially pre-reading. One good analogy for it would be like a parent watching an R-rated movie to make certain it’s appropriate for their thirteen-year-old. Different households have different standards of appropriateness, and so the individual parent is previewing a movie that’s borderline for their household.
I did this recently with two “scary” books for older readers, checking them out simply because my niece was under the age group intended. Her parents wouldn’t thank me for her nightmares; nor, I imagine, would she. (Turns out, they weren’t so scary… They were very good, though.)
Still, most of my pre-reads for the wee ones in my family are for different reasons than worries about “maturity ratings.” My concerns are more that time isn’t endless and they might as well read good books. If you recall, I don’t fully subscribe to the read, just read hypothesis. As I can zip through a middle-grade book much faster than they can, it doesn’t take much for me to preview the occasional book for them.
A good library book
In fact, my endeavors there have even created a new category of book (one for my nieces and nephews and me, and I think probably useless to everyone else). We call a certain caliber of book “a good library book.” It’s a book that one’s happy to have read, but it’s not so delectable that you’d really want to read it again and again. It’s not Bill Peet; it’s not Susanna Clarke. It’s not one that I’d be seriously upset if it isn’t on my shelf right now when I can’t get anything from my public library other than e-books and audiobooks—though how grateful I am for audiobooks. As bookshelf space isn’t endless, we’re adventuring together to decide which books are worth owning and which are worth reading but not necessarily treasured enough to stay with us throughout life. It’s even okay if you do want to re-read a public library copy, because then they are less likely to cull it for lack of checkouts. (Not that I always mind their culling, as it’s allowed me to acquire the real mother of dragons book most unexpectedly, after I’d been hunting unsuccessfully for months to track down a non-sketchy edition, because ISBN searches are handy only when you already possess the ISBN.)
By appearances, we’re doing some hard, mature thinking as we try to think through what a good library book might be, but I’m really just trying to spare them my fate. Moving boxes of books isn’t fun. Arranging books on shelves isn’t fun. Putting together bookshelves is the least fun. A home library doesn’t need to overwhelm their living space as it does mine. And there’s nothing wrong with a (public) library book. They can be quite good.
For example I’m still not sure whether R.J. Anderson’s delicious magical murder mysteries are good library books or ones worth owning. (I own them.) I know the covers are terrible. I am judging that book’s cover, regardless of whether I’m judging the book by its cover. But the books are really good. This is, actually, the super hazy dividing line: “A good book can be a library book. A great book—however conceived—is one you want at home.” I’ll read Jethro and Joel Were a Troll just about any time, though more often to children than to myself—I’ve even used it in literacy programs before. Its last page is one of the most imaginative you’ll see. It’s the perfect complete ending that yet leaves room for your imagination to continue in that land as you please.
(I have Redwall listed as a good library book, a designation which I realize may lose me subscribers. Another good library book is the creepy one about the tree growing into a house which is quite similar to the tree trying to grow into my house and is a book I happily passed along to my niece in a “care package” drop off. The person being cared for was me.)
So my reading for others when it comes to those younger than I, particularly nieces and nephews, has the goal of giving them books worth reading, ones that won’t waste their time. I was not impressed with The Curse of the Werepenguin and so I didn’t recommend it to my niece. I don’t care if she reads it; I’m not censoring it. It’s just not good enough to merit the recommendation. But I pre-read it because it might have been worth her while. And not every pre-read is intended for library patronage—sometimes I’ll suggest they do indeed own the book or I’ll give it to them for a birthday.
For some of the reluctant readers in my family, I look into other types of reads, ones that might catch their interest. (I’m definitely the odd uncle who gave fishing maps for a birthday present one time. Map reading is reading, and it’s not a useless type of reading, either. I don’t typically find myself previewing maps, lest I give the impression that my time is endless and spent investigating all the written treasures of the world.) Pre-reads for reluctant readers aren’t the same as the pre-reads for the bookworms, and yet they retain the sense of “is this worth their attention.” In this type of reading for others, the great thing is that the bar isn’t whether it’s a perfect book or not, but simply one good enough.
On Friday I’ll continue this theme, moving into more mature territory for those of you who are wondering what werepenguins and trolls have to do with you!
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. Please don’t come after me with knives and pitchforks, oh librarian readers.
P.P.S. I’m absolutely embarrassed to say that in my essay on “The Bonus Read,” I completely overlooked giving brief mention to Clare Coffey’s “On the Monster Beat.” (This is perhaps because I’d already mentioned it to you all in glowing terms in a postscript to “The Ambivalent Read.” I should note that as it was a postscript, it was most definitely not intended as an example of an ambivalent read itself.) I’m embarrassed mostly because it’s such an absurdly great example of a bonus read. Weirdly, I’d kind of hoped it might be a bonus read before I even read it, as if there were an uncanny sense that it might be such a thing. Although as the title of the piece itself is so splendidly whimsical, perhaps that was just a giveaway, and we can make it all explainable and boring. But I say it was uncanny.
Regardless, her piece is ostensibly a book review, a book review of a very odd book. And it is, in fact, that, but there’s so much more there. The piece has a strange cadence and an even stranger unifying theme—yet it all works. It is more essay than review, almost, providing a glimpse into a sort of gloaming that vanishes just so, leaving you quite without words for its magic.
Those aren’t really the reasons I should have mentioned it, though. I should have mentioned it because an overwhelming number of my subscribers are from Wisconsin. And this matters because—spoiler alert—Wisconsin ends up being central to the book being reviewed! It’s actually rather horrifying because Wisconsin doesn’t need any help being thought of as weird. I mean, this description of the book she’s reviewing doubles as a description of recent national coverage of Wisconsin’s election: “[it’s] something between a bestiary, a campfire tale collection, and a cryptozoology field report.”
You shouldn’t read it with any connection to an election in mind, of course, but Wisconsin has never needed a tagline like “keep Wisconsin weird.” We always manage to find some way of approximating that designation without any aspirational reminder. The book Coffey reviews is supposed to be a general overview of urban legends, but you discover pretty quickly in her review that the core of the book involves Wisconsin’s legends, including a novelty from Muskego that I’d never heard of. So if you want a hint of Wisconsin’s place among urban legends and ancient lore, Coffey’s review more than satisfies that want.
Oh, and by the way, the Wisconsin bits are not what make it a bonus read, though they might be that for you. I won’t spoil the real bonus. That’s for those on the monster beat.