When you work in library, you often get asked if you could
suggest a good book. We usually ask some questions before we suggest anything
so we know which genre he or she is looking for; but in the end the answer is
probably a romantic book like Danielle Steel, or a thriller like Aspe. Only
every once in a while I get a jewel of a customer who rejects all those generic
novels and asks “But I really liked Anna Karenina when I was younger, don’t you
have something like that?”
So when I was thinking about what I should write about for this month’s “About
books” blog post I thought I might try to speculate a bit about what a good
book actually is, without straying too far into subjectivity. And to aid me in
this I will use a couple of lists to illustrate my point. Because who doesn’t
love lists?
The first list I want to show you is the first one that turned up when I
googled the term bestsellers. It’s a Dutch list of what’s currently in the top
10, but it’ll do fine.
1. The Fault in Our Stars (young adult novel)
2. Powerfood (cook book)
3. Kieft (autobiography of a soccer player)
4. For You (romance)
5. The Midwife (romance)
6. Augustus (historical novel)
7. And The Mountains Echoed (novel)
8. Golden Shore (thriller)
9. Don’t Ask Why (thriller)
10. Life of a Loser: dumped. (Kid’s novel)
It’s quite a diverse selection. Only two of them (six and seven) would I
consider to be bought by people why don’t shy away from a tougher read. Two are
romances, two thrillers, two non-fiction and two books for teens/children. It’s
tough to see which book would be of a better quality than the others.
The second list is from Wikipedia, and it’s the list of best-selling books of
all time.
1. A Tale of Two Cities (historical novel)
2. The Lord of the Rings (fantasy)
3. Le Petit Prince (novella)
4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (fantasy)
5. And Then There Were None (crime novel)
6. Dream of the Red Chamber (novel)
7. The Hobbit (fantasy)
8. She: A History of Adventure (novel)
9. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (fantasy)
10. The Da Vinci Code (thriller)
All these books are or sound familiar, yet it is still a very diverse list. My
inner self is exclaiming “hah!” pretty loudly at all that fantasy and Tolkien,
but I’ll try to not to dwell on that.
Still, it’s not very clear what the blueprint of the universally ideal book is.
So let’s move on to yet another list; a list that is not numbered and of which
I will post the link here because it’s quite long. It’s a list compiled by a
hundred people who are all supposed to know a thing or two about writing and
books, a collection of titles of which these people think are the best books
ever written.
Do click on; I find it quite interesting.
immediately we see that these are books that are all very familiar, but I doubt
that 90% of the customers in our library – people who you’d expect to be
inclined to read- have read more than five of these titles. Maybe we need to
make two categories in which we can divide our holy grails: the bestsellers and
the literature.
|
Bestsellers
|
literature
|
|
Easy to read
|
Not particularly easy to read
|
|
Easy to empathize with characters
|
complicated characters
|
|
Predictable storyline
|
Attention to metaphors, detail, symbolic
|
|
Sometimes escapist/ wish fulfilment
|
timeless
|
|
Often an incredulously idealistic main character
|
Original
|
|
Genre specific
|
Not genre specific
|
|
compelling
|
Sometimes provocative
|
*Please note that some novels might have qualities from both
columns, this is after all just a rather crude representation I made in ten
minutes.
This is the point where I compare Fifty
Shades of Gray to, oh, I don’t know, The
Catcher in the Rye.
Catcher in the Rye has sold over 65
million copies. Fifty Shades of Gray has
sold over a hundred million copies (Humanity, I am disappointed.)
(I have not read Fifty Shades, but I
have heard enough to know it ticks all the boxes in the bestseller category.)
So why is it that in schools we discuss Salinger but not James- apart from the
fact that any principal would probably get a fit if a teacher wanted to discuss
pornography in class? My opinion on this matter is that James made a very
skewed picture of reality. Fans are so caught up in the wish fulfilment of the
tortured handsome man that makes the main character feel special because she’s
the only one that can change him- just guessing, tell me if I’m wrong- that
they willingly turn a blind eye to what it should be. I’ve read a couple of
opinions from people who are into BDSM, and they all agree that what happens in
the novels is wrong, because the writer got the depiction of consent, safety
words, and after care all wrong. But let’s focus on that skewing of reality.
After all, Shakespeare himself wrote some pretty weird plays (Midsummer Night’s
Dream anyone?) and we still consider those literature. What’s the difference?
Well, the difference is that James got her reality wrong, and that Salinger
(and good old William) focus on certain aspects of humanity or emphasize them,
which encourages to perceive the world and the people in it anew. The moral, or
the reasoning of their story rings true. I’m not sure if 50 Shades even has a
moral or logical reasoning. (Another example: The Trial. Mental book. But look
how often reality has been compared to this book. If someone talks about a Kafkaesque situation
we allnknow what we’re talking about.)
If we, hypothetically, would want to create a book that would satisfy everyone,
we would need to balance on this slack wire between maintaining credibility
(morally, emotionally, and logically; the motive behind the actions must be
believable) and maintaining the escapism (where we want to be reading because
the book is so much more interesting (does not have to be better) than
reality).
So what do we need in our cocktail? Everything in measures, of course. But
let’s figure out some of the main ingredients.
- An original idea! This is where it all starts. Do you want to be riding
someone’s vampire lovers’ wave or would you rather start your own hype?
-
Good structured storyline: get rid of all the plot holes, trim the subplots
that lead to nowhere. Make sure your story isn’t predictable. Instead of making
the reader wonder who’s done it, make them wonder who hasn’t done it! So get
rid of the fairy tale happy wedding ending and create a shiny new possibility. Make
the main characters ride off into the sunset on a triceratops while they
activate the hormone bomb, to bring peace and love and equality between all
dinosaurs. You know what I mean.
- Sentence structure. Because if I find another Young Adult novel in first
person present tense I might kill someone. Make your sentences flow! There are
courses out there that can help you with this.
- Background information. This is a tricky one, because it depends on what kind
of story you’re going for. Song of Ice
and Fire is very saturated but it’s still one of the book’s fine qualities,
whilst The Old Man and the Sea barely
has any background information but people still love the simplicity of it. Make
sure it’s interesting, and make sure it’s correct.
- Metaphors. Everyone loves a metaphor. I could eat them all day. Make them
dreamy, make them tense, make them squishy, but make them!
- Speak to the imagination. Create the scenery of your dreams. Make them
bigger. Cultivate the atmosphere.
- None of this really matters. None of the 1300 words you just read matter.
Why? Because rules are made to be broken. Sometimes telling is better than
showing. Sometimes more is better than less. And sometimes vampire love is
exactly what we need.
Until next time,
Bejoes
