Finding Your Next Read (Old School)
I’m an expert at finding life changing books for myself (and maybe for you too, if you’re a regular reader of this blog). I’m confident in saying that I excel in magically summoning the most amazing books. It’s a talent and an art form. I think because I work in a library, and have worked in one or another most of my adult life, I have increased my odds of what is known in Coincidence Theory as a “library angel experience.” I talked about this in an interview with Kerry Clare when my novel Everything Affects Everyone came out. From the interview, I said:
“I think most writers and readers have had what is known as a “library angel” experience in “coincidence theory.” (Which in fact, I had done no looking into until just now). There’s a book by Arthur Koestler that details the phenomena anecdotally, apparently. (Perhaps that book will fall into my path now that I’ve mentioned it). It’s just the phenomena, though, of a book finding you in whatever way as if you have conjured it, and there are tales of books falling off the shelf and it being the precise one that person needed or was hoping for.”
So the number one way of finding a book for me is still browsing in a library or bookshop. And I lately talked about finding a book about browsing at a shop. I will often hear about a book from a person who comes into the library. Recently I was working in the library when someone was looking for material about Erik Satie and coincidentally I had just read Ian Penman’s Erik Satie Three Piece Suite which you might remember from a couple of posts ago. So we had this lovely chat about good ol’ Esoterik Satie. I’m just weird enough to believe in the cosmic reciprocity of book sharing. That if we share the books we love, then the universe helps put more in our way, and a beautiful cycle or loop will occur. A simple matter I’m sure of “you get back what you give.” Anyway, this interaction was meaningful to me who sometimes feels as if I am thought of as completely archaic and redundant and supernumerary and useless in today’s library setting. But it turns out that knowing weird literary and musical things can be of use from time to time.
There have been discussions online in circles that I’m not really part of about the performativity of sharing books on places like Instagram and TikTok, which I get. The book cover matching the fancy beverage etc, the sharing being more of an aesthetic thing than about the books themselves. This is all fine, really, so long as people are finding books they love, imho. If publishers design their covers for certain markets, I don’t think this hurts much? A little, no doubt, but it’s not the end of the world.
How I tend to find books I love: yes, sometimes on Instagram or FB, at the library, browsing bookshops (not as often as I’d wish to but there you go), a book will be mentioned in another book, an author I admire will share a quotation, from other blogs (such as Kerry Clare’s), on my favourite podcast On Being, and from friends. This last one is so lovely — because it reminded me that much like the advice of “shopping in your closet” it’s also good to browse your own bookshelf (I hope you have one (or two or three etc) stuffed to the brim). During a recent coffee we swapped titles and authors we’ve been loving and one of the books I mentioned because I thought my friend might like it is I Send You This Cadmium Red… by John Berger and John Christie. I have it in the hard cover and it is a delight — but I’d all but forgotten about it. So it’s back on my TBR pile after languishing, poor thing, on my bookshelf for an eon.
I would be delighted to hear how you often find the books you love. (With luck one of the answers you give will be, here, on TwB).
I’ll end today with some of what I have queued up in my current and ever changing TBR pile:
— What I found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities by Dar Williams. I heard about this one from Kerry Clare and I can already tell it is going to rock my world in a thousand ways. Wow.
— Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories by Herman Melville. Everyone was quoting from Bartleby “I would prefer not” in the pandemic-ish era and though I knew the gist of the context of the line I wanted to read the original. Which I now have. But I also want to read the rest of the stories.
— Book of Gods & Grudges by Jessica L. Walsh. When you read a poem like “When My Daughter Tells Me I was Never Punk” you go ahead and find the book in which it is collected.
— I recently read Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler because everyone was talking about how scarily appropriate to our times it is and I’m here to tell you, YES.
— Architecture and Affect by Lilian Chee. I am a big fan of Ordinary Affects by Kathleen Stewart and the work of Lauren Berlant so when this came up in an ad on Facebook (ugh, I know but sometimes…) I looked into it further. I’m a chapter in and it is fascinating. I know for sure this book will get its very own post in the near future.
— Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford. I’ve been sitting on this one for a while because am still processing it on so many levels and because it means quite a lot to the book I’m writing now which I cannot get a grant to finish to save my life but that I still believe in and will finish anyway it’s just harder to get to and carve out time when you are working and side hustling etc. Anyway. You’ve probably heard about this book as it was a bestseller when it came out in 2009. I freaking love it even though it has re-kindled my desire to ride a motorcycle.
I think I will stop there for today! But there will always be more books to fall in love with, to think with, to learn from, to revel in, and delight and find kindred spirits within. Unmet friends, as the wonderful Carolyn Heilbrun once said.
Please comment below or on insta or Fb. Would love to hear your thoughts on finding books, on what you’re reading now, what you want to read, if you’ve ever had a library angel moment etc.
Thanks for being here!
