Eve Adami: "Dear Carmen Maria Machado: What Makes Me Pick Up a Book"

Dear Carmen Maria Machado: What Makes Me Pick up a Book  

by Eve Adami

 So many books, so little time. Luckily, I’m picky so this isn’t too much of a problem for me. In this post I’ll share with you how I pick out a book. What makes me like it and what makes me stop reading it. Although my methods do almost always find me a book I like, I have found that I love pretty much every book I’ve been forced to read in a class, so… yea.

Although I agree that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, I do in fact, judge a book by its cover. I’ve found that a lot of speculative fiction stories have covers with mythical creatures or stoic looking girls. These do not appeal to me. Before this class I did not read a lot of speculative fiction because I believed they were solely stories, or entertainment, and not something you could learn from. Luckily, this class has proved me wrong and I now know that speculative fiction is just as valid, if not more so, than any other genre. But I am not fully turned and when I see a cover that is so purely science fiction or fantasy and action-y I cannot take the leap. I know that a lot of other people do the same thing. But on the other hand, those types of covers appeal to a certain audience. I like covers that are ambiguous. They could be realistic fiction or they could be speculative fiction. I will almost definitely attempt to read a book if the cover of the book looks like it could be realistic fiction and then the I read the inside cover and discover it is speculative fiction. I will also read a book if the synopsis is confusing. I know this idea may be counter-intuitive, but I can give some examples. Earlier this year I read a book entitled Challenger Deep by Neil Shusterman. This was one of the rare books that I picked up to read this year in my free time, so you know it must have looked very good to me.

The cover looked interesting, but gave me little insight on what the book was actually about. The synopsis goes on to describe the character of Caden Bosch as a high school student as well as an artist on ship. It was short and didn’t help me much on what the book was about, and this made it much more intriguing.

                This brings me into my least favorite thing an author can do; spend too much time on world building. If any character is described (their relation to other characters, who they are, etc.) within the first couple pages, there is a good chance I will put down the book. In fantasy and science fiction stories may take place in realities separate from our own, but I do not need the new reality to be directly explained to me. I prefer decoding the world for myself. Challenger Deep was a bit confusing at first, but the lack of world building allowed me to fully see the world from the main character’s perspective. This ended up adding tremendously to the story (don’t want to spoil it though). My favorite book, The Underneath by Kathi Appelt is also free of any discrete world building. It also fits my cover test, with the cover featuring a dog and cat, while the book is about a cat’s adventure in a magical swamp. The Underneath is written with beautiful poetic language, and if Appelt attempted to explain the rules of the new world, this language would have been lost.

As I’m writing this I’m realizing that truly all of my favorite books follow the criteria mentioned above. Kurt Vonnegut always jumps right in to his stories, not sparing any words to explain what exactly is going on. And the resulting spontaneity in books such as Slaughterhouse-Five makes them fun to read. I think this could be why I have loved the short stories we have read in class so much. There is no time in short stories for intense world building. All words are reserved for actual story. 

While I understand that not picking up books that have clear covers or synopses severely limits my options, the method has found me some of my favorite reads. Perhaps I am a true speculative fiction reader who is too particular for my own good, but I don’t think I am going to change my ways anytime soon.