Booklust and Booklists

The love affair started in the aisle of a Tasmanian supermarket.

I gravitated towards the bookracks, circumnavigating the attractively displayed toys and made a beeline for the Children’s Book Section and picked out my first Golden Book. Thereafter, every week I would pick out a Golden Book (even when asked to pick a toy) until the 29 cents they cost became a staple on the family grocery budget and even the cashier would ask my mother why I hadn’t gotten one on the rare week it might be missed.

Credit goes to my mother who would read the stories to me as many times as I demanded even if it was the same one, thrice in a row. I used to make her read them to me over and over again until I knew the words by heart and knew which word to turn the page on. I would then enthrall old Australian ladies at bus stops with my fake reading skills, who would ooh and aah over the three-year old reading prodigy while my poor mother stood torn between pride at my proficiency and discomfort at my deception.

It was the start of the most enduring romance of my life.

I believe that everything good in my life has come from a love of books and reading. In order to organize and get the most out of my reading life, I have, over the decades, tried various approaches:

1 – By Author
A fairly common way to read is by perusing all the works by a single author before moving on to the next. The advantages of this approach is that it gives you deeper insight into a particular author’s writing. By comparing their first work with their latest, one can see the trajectory of their development (or not) as a writer and the progression of their craft. A reader becomes intimately acquainted with a particular writer’s style and thought process.

2 – By Genre
Another approach is to read within a genre. It could be poetry or plays or autobiographies or fiction but to read widely within a specific sphere. Within the genre, sub-genres may be explored e.g. Within poetry one may choose to read haiku or confessional poems or nature poems. The advantage of this is that it can familiarize the reader with the rules and formalities of a genre and how writers fit in, subvert or play with those rules.

3 – By Subject
You can pick a subject like say, space exploration, and read everything falling under that topic regardless of author, genre, time period. This method is helpful in exposing the reader to different treatments of a single topic and can yield comparative understandings of authoritative vs. obscure texts on a subject.

4 – By Time Period
Medieval, Renaissance, Victorian, Islamic Golden Age, World War I, World War 2, American Civil War are examples of some of the significant eras in our history with strong literary traditions. A reader may choose a particular era or century or even a single year. They may skip through literary time or progress chronologically. This style of reading tends to appeal to readers with a strong interest in the historical, even though it can be applied to contemporary reading as well.

5 – By Movement
Some of the greatest movements in history have inspired and informed literature as much as they have depended on it. Whether political revolutions or artistic movements, they have found expression in the written word. A writer may choose to read surrealistic literature or books written during the surge of feminism or Romanticism, transcendentalism, civil rights or hippie movement, for that matter. An important approach for deepening your understanding of the context in which certain literature has developed and influenced us.

6 – By Lists
There are any number of lists that are useful to a reader who wants to work their way through essential must-reads: NY Times bestseller lists, Time Magazine’s 100 best books of all times, goodread lists, etc. These serve to broadly cover books that have stood the test of time as classics, are influential texts or in more contemporary lists are books that have popular appeal.

7 – By Associative Reading
This way of reading is when the reader progresses by association. E.g. Reading a biography of William Wordworth leads to a reading of his poems which in turn leads to a reading on Romanticism in poetry which leads to a reading of other Romantic poets which may lead to literary theory amd criticism.

8 – By Random Reading
Unstructured reading is its own pleasure. When I’m in the mood for adventurous reading, I may walk through a library aisle and randomly pick out books, not looking at title or author. I may check out four or five books at a time this way and end up with a surprising mix for reading. It’s varied, unexpected and fun.

You can also mix-and-match any of the above approaches e.g. Time Period (Renaissance) > Author (Shakespeare) > Genre (Plays).

I wish you a vibrant reading life. Until next week!