I often get books from the library and then they just sit there waiting for me to dive in. I’m not sure why this happens but I think it’s because starting new books requires extra concentration and sometimes this is in short supply. There’s a whole new bunch of characters to get acquainted with and you need to really focus to work out who’s who in the zoo. I find it especially hard when the book has a lot of foreign names or people with similar names, but sometimes I think I’m still attached to the people I met (and grew to love) in the last book that I was reading. I don’t want to let go of them just yet.
Once you are in a book and caught up in the story, the pages just seem to turn themselves and before you know it, it’s past your bedtime. You become invested in other people’s lives and think about them when you are washing up or cleaning the shower. I love it when that happens.
Someone once told me that if f you are going on a long plane trip or into hospital for any length of time, it’s best to take a book that you have already started reading. In both these situations your concentration is poor, so it’s preferable to be in the middle of a book rather than right at the beginning.
I remember trying to read “I know why the caged bird sings” by the writer and poet Maya Angelou when I was in early labour with my first child and realising that I should have brought a murder mystery or a romance novel with me.
I also recall going to Tasmania with my family for a lovely holiday and being unable to read any of the books I had ‘saved’ for the trip. I spent quite a bit of the plane trip trying to read Harry Potter over the shoulder of the woman next to me who was a complete stranger. I think she cottoned on in the end because she looked a bit annoyed and tried to angle the book away from me. It didn’t help that I’m quite a fast reader and kept getting to the end of the page before she did. I had taken three books with me but none of them were just right.
In Paula Munier’s book “The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings” she lists the questions that readers want answered when they start a new book.
We need to work out what kind of book we are reading, who is telling the story and where it takes place, but most of all we need to know why we should care about them. Very clever writers can answer most of these questions in the first couple of paragraphs. It doesn’t necessarily need to answer all our questions, we just need to get hooked enough to make us turn the first page.
Choosing your next book is also a very personal thing. I like to download samples onto my iPad and read the first couple of chapters before I purchase a book or request a title from the library (it’s usually the latter). When I’m looking for something new to read, I just browse through my sample chapters until something takes my fancy. Either that, or I go to my circle of friends (which includes my reading family) and ask them what they’ve been reading lately.
How do you choose your next read?
Margaret Moon 