You're Not as Good a Reader as you Think

There are a few assumptions about being a good reader of fiction. The first is grade level reading. The assumption being that the more difficult a book you can read, the better you are. This is useful if you’re testing children for comprehension, but I am interested in making someone a great reader not adequate to pass forth grade.

The next assumption is that of speed. That by reading more quickly you are better at reading. This is, in some minor way true, but again it is unnecessary to be a fast reader to be a great reader just as a master artist need not make his work quickly for it to be great. Though it is impressive.

Next is the question of what you have read. This comes in two connected ideas. The first is that of breadth of reading. That having read many books makes you a better reader. This person will talk about having read fifty books this year, or having read every book on the top lists of all time. Connected to that is the depth of reading. This is the assumption that having read Crime and Punishment and Moby-Dick makes you a better reader that someone else. Reading important books and widely can, I believe, make you a better person, but I am not convinced it makes you a better reader.

Finally, is the most toxic of the ideas. That being able to find the flaws, plot holes and weaknesses in a book makes you a great reader. It works from the assumption that a book is a story told to you by an author, and it is the sole job of the author to create a world that the reader can step into without effort. This is not true, and any attempt to make that world in fiction would create an entirely unreadable book.

I suspect some of you now are thinking of books that have done just that. But what they did was a magic trick. They made you think the author had created an entire world that you stepped into, when in fact, you made most of the world yourself. Because if there is a secret to being a great reader, then that is it. That reading a book is not a passive act. A reader must collaborate with the writer to create the world.

Consider for now a moment a simple brief description from The Hound of the Baskervilles “A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.” If you are like me you have a good idea what that hound looks like. But think back to all the assumptions made in the description. It assumes first that you know what a hound is and looks like. It also assumes you understand what coal-black is. So far these are simple, but then it moves on to say it was not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. This bit is where the magic trick really happens. It doesn’t tell you much, but yet you fill it in. Perhaps you add glowing eyes or an aura of danger. Perhaps it becomes something from a half-remembered nightmare or a movie you watched as a child that scared you. Arthur created a hound, you created the rest.

Now that you understand that you can practice becoming a better reader. I suggest you start with something to train yourself that is generally considered good. H. P. Lovecraft is a master at this particular type of magic, and learning to appreciate the horror of not knowing is excellent practice. But it is also good practice because while Howard is a talented writer (we will for the sake of brevity leave his personality out of this), he wasn’t always that and some of his, well say less impressive work leads to the next step in being a good reader.

A great reader is one who can elevate that which he reads. Most people can read a masterpiece and find something of value in it. It is what makes it a masterpiece. And anyone who tries hard enough can find the flaw in those masterpieces this may be a skill, but it is not one that is worth learning. They are there and sometimes even fun to find. But a great reader can pick up something mediocre or even bad and still find a way to enjoy it.

It is perhaps easier to explain with movies. Anyone who has spent time on the internet has seen the questions, usually as jokes, of why they didn’t ride the eagles to Mt. Doom. Finding this funny isn’t a problem, but if you allow it to make watching the movie less enjoyable, then you are bad at watching movies. Not just because there are simple explanations, but because you’re being a bad collaborator. In improve terms you’re saying no instead of yes, and.

The counter of this is people who watch terrible movies and love them. Enjoying something like Battlefield Earth or The Room requires something of the person watching it. They need to understand what makes a wonderful movie to find the humor in that being done wrong. They are good collaborators because they fill in the flaws of the movie and elevate it above what it was meant to be. A great reader can do the same.

The question of how you do this is more tricky. But at its heart is the desire to enjoy a book rather than find flaws in it and practice at doing this. It doesn’t mean that a book can’t bore you or put you can’t put a book down that is bad. It means that if you choose to read a book; you focus on the good. You question your assumptions of its flaw and try to find answers rather than criticizing it. It means that you spend a few seconds thinking about what the author probably meant by that awkwardly written sentence before you assume it isn’t important. It means that you work with the author not against the author to enjoy yourself because at its heart reading fiction is meant to be enjoyable.

Note: None of this is true if you are a beta reader, editor, or even entirely when writing a review. This is advice for reading a book, not for any of those things. Though it is worth considering when listening to a review. Because taking advice from a bad reader on what to read will get you poor results.

Convincing People to Read

I like to read and I'm always a bit surprised when people say that they don't like to read. On the other hand I totally understand, especially when I think about my experience in high school English class. I already liked reading by the time that I reached High School, but if I hadn't I honestly think that it might have convinced me that I didn't like to read.

High School for me was quite a while ago and perhaps it has changed, but there are a few ideas that I still see from time to time. The first of these is that we all need to stop looking down on books. I don't care whether it's Twilight, Harry Potter, Fifty Shades of Grey or the most recent Stephen King novel they are popular for a reason. Some of those are clearly not written for me and if I read them I'd either be annoyed or bored. On the other hand I know plenty of people who would find the Martian Chronicles, The Foundation Trilogy, 1984 and Ender's Game boring. I can even imagine a person who wouldn't enjoy the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Though I'm not sure I can explain that.)

All of these have something in common with every other book that has ever been written. They are finite in length and they were influenced by other books. Did you like the Twilight books because of the romance, perhaps you should try a Jane Austin novel. Were you intrigued by the vampires, Bram Stoker's Dracula is considerably more interesting than you might think (And Mina Harker is a way more interesting female character than any in Twilight though that's just my opinion.) Know a kid who has read Harry Potter 4 times, ask some questions and find out which of the many great books fit what they liked. Whether it is The Hobbit, The Once and Future King, The Dresden files, The Hunger games or any of a dozen other ideas you have one huge advantage. They are already interested in reading. You just have to find books that meet them where they are at.

And that's the problem I had in my High School English class. I had an excellent teacher, a good school and I was interested in the subject but I had no connection to Shakespeare, Beowulf or most of the other required reading. And while I completely understand the desire to get people to read important books, those books are important because they connected to the people at the time. Shakespeare is still remembered because he made plays that people wanted to watch, Beowulf was a popular story and the Canterbury Tales has significant amounts of toilet humor.

Here is the secret, if you want kids, or adults, to read you have to understand why people read. People read because they enjoy it. People read because they form connections to books, because a book, better than any other type of media can grab you and say that someone else understands how you feel, that there are people that feel the same way. Remember that confusion and anger in high school, so does Holden Caulfield. Do you feel the weight of the world on you, like everyone is counting on you. Harry Potter certainly understands that. Are you exhausted and just want to give up. Sam and Frodo certainly could relate. I don't know perhaps if you're a teenage girl trying to deal with romance Bella might actually make you feel better. The point is if you are going through anything there is a book character that can step up beside you and say, "I understand and other people go through this too." And while that may not solve the problem it certainly helps. But it requires the right book at the right time, not just the important book.

I believe that if you can get the right book into the hands of anyone and get them to read enough to understand that it is speaking to them that they will enjoy it and even if they don't make the time to read more books they are going to at least understand the value and perhaps the next time they need a book they will seek it out but at least they might have some positive memories of that book.

Reading is an Act of Trust

I was thinking about writing as an art and how it differs from other forms of art and I recognized something that I had never really articulated to myself before. I think writing is one of the only forms of art that people pay for before they know if it’s good. Even other forms of story media generally give clues to the quality before you pay.

 It’s hard to imagine any way it would work with any other form of art. I have a painting here, no, you can’t remove the curtain before you buy it. My music is great, so please buy it before you listen to it. And so on. A movie is a bit closer but they give us previews that are the best parts and with a comic book you can know if you’ll like the art before you give anything for the story.

It’s not just money though. I give away a fair amount of writing and most books have preview chapters. But there is still far more cost in time and effort before you have any idea if what I wrote is good. Sure the back cover might make you chuckle or the first line is great, but buying or even deciding to read a novel is agreeing to spend the next ten hours with someone. Sure you can always leave, but you don’t want to have to.

This dichotomy is most clear to me at comic book conventions. I have two novels which I bring and sell. They sit next to posters, comics and the offer for hand drawn sketches and the reaction to them are very different than any of the other art. There are naturally the people who just don’t read books, but even the people who do have a much different reaction to a novel than a comic book. They ask what it’s about something they almost never do with a comic book. They’ll turn it in their hand and flip through the pages without reading anything and rarely will they read the back. A tiny summery text that attempts to represent a two hundred page story in two paragraphs of writing that has a different tone and style than anything inside the book and rarely they’ll decide the premise is interesting enough and buy my book.

But in the end it comes down to trust. They know almost nothing about my book. They are simply trusting me with their time and possibly their money with no real evidence that I’m a good writer besides two paragraphs on the back cover of a book. And beyond that they are trusting that I’m someone who they want to spend many hours listening to tell a story. They trust that the painting is good before the curtain is pulled back, that the music is good before play button is pushed. Of course if they have already seen my work then that trust is easier. If someone who does music I love has a Kickstarter I’ll give them money before I hear the song and the same is true of a book from an author I love, but in the case of the author there was still a first time when I had to give them a chance.

In the end I give people that chance for the same reason anyone does. Fiction or Nonfiction, short or long, happy or sad, A good book allows me to see the world in a different way. I step into the mind of someone else and understand them a bit better. I learn to care about kids making rockets in their back yard, about hobbits and wizards, about living statues and alien creatures. It is art and for me at least it is the art that reaches in the deepest and changes me the most. So I’ll keep looking for the people I can trust. The writer I can enjoy a long evening with. The ones who help me to see a bit more clearly, to think a bit more deeply and to care a little more and I will continue to endeavor to create stories that will do the same for someone else.