The art of suggesting a read
Dear Reader,
Let’s commence with a quote from last summer that I think will provide an essential framework for anything that follows:
“I have this pet theory about book recommendations. They feel good to solicit, good to mete out, but someone at some point has to get down to the business of reading. And there, between giving and receiving, lies a great gulf. No one can quite account for what happens. Reading, hopefully, but you never can be sure.”
Today’s topic is near and dear to my heart. The idea of recommending books is a rather important one. As of course it is important subject to me, that will make the piece all the harder. I’ll probably have to revisit to clarify all the things I’ve left out.
Perhaps the most important thing in recommending a read is to actually think of the other person. This might seem obvious, but it’s readily overlooked in one’s own enthusiasm or whatnot. So in the spirit of exploring precisely how difficult a recommendation can be, I’ll share a non-reading story to give us some scope.
Just the other day I was in a business lecture wherein its leader decided to declare that the Golden Rule was inadequate.
Now the Golden Rule becomes important in any sort of recommendation, but is particularly important in our case of book recommendations. And what was interesting about this business lecture is that our lecturer had himself soundly misunderstood the Golden Rule. You see the Golden Rule is “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Makes sense. Works pretty well. All that jazz.
But our industrious business leader decided the Golden Rule was incomplete and what we really needed to do was what he does—and he stole this from elsewhere—the Platinum Rule, with the idea that platinum is more valuable than gold. While it may be true that in the present-day world platinum is more valuable than gold, in this case it is not. The Platinum Rule according to this clever instructor means, “Do unto others as they would have done to them.”
By my business instructor’s lights the Golden Rule meant that you treated other people the way you wanted to be treated. As in, you are the universal rule and so your taste applies to all others. This means that if you bumped your knee and you like chocolate ice cream after such a bump, then everyone must desire chocolate ice cream after a knee bump. No other options exist, whether they be vanilla ice cream, chocolate candy, or a simple hug.
This is to completely misunderstand the Golden Rule. Whether you want to get into basic hermeneutics, sensus plenior, historical-critical method, historical-grammatical method or… Yeah, let’s not do that. We can use a simpler term for our needs: context. (Also acceptable: basic literacy.)
In the context of the material in which the Golden Rule is found, you’d be hard-pressed to unravel a meaning of that rule other than “think of others and their specific needs and wants when you interact with them, just as you would hope that others do when considering you.” The Golden Rule makes literally no sense when applied as narrowly as our instructor wished it applied. It would be incoherent.
What’s even more fascinating, though, is that the so-called Platinum Rule is much much weaker than the Golden Rule. Take a child who wants to eat nothing but candy. The Platinum Rule states that I should give that child all the candy, nothing but. Is that really how I’d hope that others would care for me? Is that actually good for the child? The Golden Rule offers the interpretive control that perhaps I wouldn’t so desire that people offered me things that weren’t truly in my best interest, and therefore it’s not in the best interest of this sugar-addled child to feed into that habit. It takes the interpretive lens and forces us to turn it back and forth.
Of course, that’s what this business instructor hoped to convey with his new rule. But by removing the Golden Rule’s interpretive controls, he turned us over to unlimited hedonism. (We might add more context to make the Platinum Rule not so unbounded, but it is that necessary extra level of interpretation on the aphorism that its very creation was supposed to remove. That is, the intellectual giants who invented and promote the term—most of them from business and psychology realms—have merely created another term that requires extensive commentary. Perhaps this helps them sell more books, but it doesn’t help anyone else. Problem of human interaction not solved.)
Oh, and lest it seem that I’ve been too harsh on this individual instructor, he needn’t have had any literary, theological, or historical interest in ancient texts. All he needed to do was read the salesperson’s bible, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Dale Carnegie never seemed confused about the Golden Rule.
So… what does this mean for us? Simply, that regardless of which “rule” we’re wanting to apply, we have to consider our motivation for the book recommendation. And of even greater import, we must consider the person receiving the recommendation—how it will fit alongside what they’ve already read, who they hope to be, what sort of reader they consider themselves, what time they have for reading, whether they’ve requested a recommendation, and so on.
Recommending a read is quite the intellectual endeavor, if you pause enough to consider it well.
At this juncture, I should probably note that I am not the least of book recommenders. My success rate is around 30% for recommendations. That might sound low, but as baseball fans would tell you about hitting, in some contexts it’s quite high.
Most people are lucky to be accurate 10% of the time in their recommendations. I do not mistype. In fact, I think it’s lower than that most days.
Most people make recommendations about like Amazon’s algorithm does: “If you liked this book, you might also like…” Now, within certain genres, perhaps. That conditional logic, however, can swiftly be turned as impersonal as anything Amazon sends out. And we rightly expect better of our friends.
Our recommendations aren’t limited to books, of course. And indeed, one of our sensitivities in recommending any read should absolutely be about the time it will demand of the person reading it.
You don’t suggest The Wheel of Time to a non-fantasy-enthusiast, and even then you wouldn’t suggest it to all fantasy enthusiasts. (As I’ve suggested to others, if you want a taste of Robert Jordan without committing yourself to a sprawling set of fourteen books, try Warrior of the Altaii) You don’t ask someone to read War and Peace on a whim. You don’t demand of a small child that instead of the sweet brevity of Go Dog, Go! that they traverse The Whingdingdilly, a much longer story for an antsy little one. You don’t suggest David Foster Wallace’s meandering essays on tennis to someone who dislikes tennis and wanted but a brief taste of his writing.
Another consideration to employ with recommending a read is that it is essentially a word of advice. Like all good counsel, it’s best to share willingly and then remove your personal pride from the recommendation. That is, you make the recommendation and then it’s up to them to consider your counsel alongside all the things that make them them and that you have no possible window into.
As George Hamlin Fitch writes, sometimes our recommendation doesn’t even come at the right time:
In reading the great books of the world one must be guided largely by his own taste. If a book is recommended to you and you cannot enjoy it after conscientious effort, then it is plain that the book does not appeal to you or that you are not ready for it. The classic that you may not be able to read this year may become the greatest book in the world to you in another year, when you have passed through some hard experience that has matured your mind or awakened some dormant faculties that call out for employment.
George Hamlin Fitch. Comfort Found in Good Old Books. 1911.
Timing our recommendation to meet a person in the right season of their life is incredibly hard. It isn’t the only reason we should hold our recommendations lightly, but it’s a significant one. (The biggest reason is that if your friends keep hectoring you about—and note I wrote hectoring—a certain book, you’ll take it like any other misplaced-but-persistent life advice: in the category of “I’m not sure I want to friends with this person anymore.”)
The essential role of a basic sensitivity to other readers can be found in the following two excerpts. The excerpts are intended to be about building up young readers and reading “the classics,” but with little effort they can be seen to apply to any reading recommendation:
It is my own belief—based on a variety of observations—that the kind of persuasion required to stimulate a young person’s interest in “the classics” need be only a little different from that applied to stir up enthusiasm for any other form of solid reading. Understanding of the individual reader’s capacities, familiarity with the general direction and compass of his interests, sensitiveness to his needs, enjoyment of his response—these, combined with knowledge of and regard for the book or books being recommended, and seasoned with appreciation of any reader’s right to “take it or leave it,” are as a general thing sufficient to bring about a casual, pleasant, and effective manner of persuasion. But in the matter of introducing the books of an older day to younger readers of the present, it seems sensible to me to recognize the need for that little difference of approach.
Probably the most important preliminary in presenting these older writings as “real, live books” is to disencumber them of their group designation as “classics,” blow away the atmosphere of veneration that clings about them, and take a good look at them as separate, highly individual works of literature in relation to their potential value to the particular young person (or persons) with whom one happens to be concerned.
Annis Duff. Longer Flight: A Family Grows Up with Books. 1955.
Continuing on with advice-for-children-that-can-easily-address-all-human interaction, consider the following:
Not all good books appeal to all children any more than all literary masterpieces find appreciation in all adult readers; and it is just as feckless to urge Alice in Wonderland on a boy whose heart is voyaging with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece as it would be to press A Passage to India to a grownup friend whose known conviction is that the art of the novel died with Henry Fielding.
Annis Duff. Longer Flight: A Family Grows Up with Books. 1955.
Oh wait, there was advice about book recommendations for adult readers in there! To be honest, you could stop with Annis Duff’s suggestions. They account for much of what I’d intended to write before I stumbled across her book. So at least give them a good read and a moment of reflection. I don’t end with them, however, because then you’d miss out on my sample listing of the archetypes of bad recommenders. You’re welcome to expand it with your own.
Archetypes of Bad Read Recommenders
The I-Just-Finished-This-Yesterday Recommender
So, you read a book, eh? And even finished it? Good for you. Now… why is it that the most recent thought your brain had is its only thought? Have you… have you considered waiting a day or month to let this book settle into your world to weigh whether it is indeed so relevant, or transforming, or magical as you presently imagine?
(For the cognitive bias nerds, we can call this one “recency bias” if it makes you happy and will spare us hearing about the out-of-date book on cognitive biases you just finished.)
The It’s-My-Favorite-Book-So-Everyone-Must-Read-It-Too Recommender
I like to call this one The Great Gatsby. You may choose your own least-favorite “this is my FaVoRiTe book!” that gets shoved down your throat by its über fans.
The breathless gush of the favorite-book enthusiast is sometimes endearing, but often it’s like being stuck in the same airspace with someone wearing too much perfume.
The This-Is-My-Hobby-So-It’s-Everyone’s-Hobby Recommender
Would you like to read about dirt? Microbiomes? Day trading? Weirdly-shaped-freckles-in-strange-places?
Some excitement is fun. And to invite our friends into a dear hobby is a good act of friendship. Yet our friends sometimes enjoy our company while preferring to overlook our strange hobbies. Not everyone gets giddy about your basement sauerkraut factory, and they almost certainly don’t want to read ten books on the ancient art of fermentation. “Come into my stinky, creepy basement” we invite our friends and new acquaintances, and then we wonder why they never join us.
The I-Haven’t-Read-It-But-I-Heard-About-It-On-NPR Recommender
This great friend doesn’t actually read much, but wowie do they inhabit the NPR (or podcast) world. And so they keep hearing about these “absolutely fascinating” books and people, and so you absolutely MUST READ the fantastic book by Person X.
On rare occasion, this is indeed the case. But the autopilot version of this—which is the more common version—overwhelms people with a deluge of recommendation sludge. Do. Not. Want.
(There’s a subset of this person, the one who saw it on the Costco book table or heard about it in passing. That person is also fun.)
The I-Want-To-Change-You Recommender
Gosh, this recommender might the worse. “Here, read this book so you can become more like me.” Or, “Your food habits are killing you, so here’s this 2,000 page food bible to help you diet and read it right now.”
Thank you?
Certainly, as good friends we might suggest books that help the person “be their best self,” but that territory is basically an inch a way, not a mile. Your friend loves cooking and you’ve uncovered a book with a unique angle on cooking? Probably a great thing to suggest! Your friend loves cooking and you’ve discovered a book on why that friend should stop cooking altogether and instead eat out with you more often? Probably not!
The I’m-A-Great-Book-Recommender-Because-I-Have-Great-Taste Maven
Well hello there, literary aesthetes and other posh stylists. “I am a serious intellectual” is one variant. “I just love recommending books to people because I am just so good at it” is another.
And how it typically works out is “here is a ponderous tome for you; and here is another!” Also, “I just loved this book, so you’ll just love this book!” as if the stretch of our common humanity covered the world of reading.
These mavens tend to be excellent literary critics in their own right (skill in literary criticism and in great book recommendations are not one-to-one the same) or gushing bloggers who somehow keep recommending the same five books of the year to everyone. Some real recommendation skill there, intrepid blogger.
Here’s the thing, we’ve probably all been each of these terrible recommenders at some point, often in overlapping fashion. This is because we’re human and fallible. Sometimes we also have to mature a bit to lower the frequency of our bad recommendations. But when it’s what you do every stinking time, you’re an airhead, plain and simple.
(Regular readers of this newsletter might imagine that I’ve been inhabiting many of these horrible recommender archetypes with my regular comments on Stephen Booth’s Precious Nonsense. But I don’t think everyone must read Precious Nonsense. I think a large subset of literary-minded people would benefit greatly; I know my students benefit from that work for specific other reasons, because teaching; I don’t think everyone or even most people should read the book, however much it’s a favorite of mine. In fact, the reason I couldn’t pull together a competent review essay upon its re-release is that I’ve never recommended that book “just because”. My own reasons for loving it aren’t necessarily anyone else’s—I recommend it to particular people for reasons particular to them. Also, to reference a book frequently is not the same as to recommend it, not directly.)
I cringe at the number of times I’ve recommended poorly. I don’t cringe at my success rate—that’s about as good as you can expect without inhabiting another person’s mind. That I can cringe at recommending poorly, though, is my one hope for improving at it. And it’s also what (usually) gives me pause when I’m recommending a read to someone else.
To return to our opening quote, do our recommendations invite people to “get down to the business of reading”? Will they actually read our recommendation? Will they ever ask us for another? Or have we simply added to the gulf between recommendation and reading?
Kreigh
P.S. If you’d like to be a completely terrible person (or simply hope these reflections might restrain the “I Want to Change You” recommenders in your life), feel free to pass this piece along to those whose frequent recommendations annoy you. Maybe you’ll help them change.