So, what books are worth reading?

By Will Murphy at ThebookCellars.com


How many times have you read about all the books you've been missing in your life. There are literally millions of books available in print and now free or for a small fee online through JSTOR or the Guttenburg Project. With so many books at your fingertips, at the local library or online how could you possible know what to read? And really, let's face it; a lot of our choices depend on the mood we are in at the time. I mean, look at our cable television. Hundred's of channels and a familiar refrain: 'There's nothing good on tonight'. Try shopping at one of the supermarket megastores. How often have you stood in front of the cereal shelf with 50 different types of Cheerios (really?) and then walk away because you can't decide which one to buy. Too many choices often lead to one result - no decision.


This isn't much different for books. Books have been around for hundreds of years now, from Shakespeare to King. This means the equivalent of a supermarket megastore. There have been lists upon lists of what readers should read over the past several years. You know, '10 books you should read before you die,' '50 books you should read before you die' or '100 books you should read before you die.' So, how do you decide? There's a few sure fire ways.

You could rely on the old 'brand loyalty' idea and stick to an author or authors you know. That may not be a bad idea in the end. If you have a list of favorite authors, and you are a casual reader by all means savor all of their works. There are lots of people out there who would be content with reading all of Stephen Kings' or John Banvilles' works, for example. However, you may find you'll eventually finish their poetry or prose. Unless they can write as fast as you can read or you find a new writer that you like.

Another possibility is that other marketing technique to 'jump on the bandwagon'. In other words, read what everyone else is reading or popular at the moment. This can be a great idea if you have the same same taste as the majority of people reading these books. It can also make you look great at dinner parties. But for the most part, you may feel disappointed at what others consider a good book. You could get luck and get a popular book that is actually good.

You might want to consider the time honored 'New York Times Bestseller' list or other reputable review. This and other reviews can give you a little better information on whether you might like a book. Take reviews with a grain of sand, though. Even the reviewer will have some bias for or against a certain author or book. If you trust the reviewers opinion, well then, go for it. If not, it would probably be better to read two or three reviews to get a more balanced view. It's not unlike asking 5 friends about a movie they have just seen and getting 5 different opinions. In the end you might just have to choose yourself.

The Book Club. These clubs are often held at someone's home in a comfortable, non-threatening area. Being in this little group of avid readers is a great opportunity for you to discover new writers from the amateur critic. Get no nonsense views from both friends and acquaintances. Often you will go through an eclectic bunch of authors, one of which you are sure to like. And more often than not, book clubs help you gain a healthy interest in authors you may not have liked before (or maybe it's the wine that is served at the bookclub). In any case, get involved and find a new favorite book.

And lastly, the old adage,  'Don't judge a book by it's cover'. Now, that may be true about people, but it is certainly always the case for books  (in fact, book publishers definitely would love for you to judge the book by its cover). Terri Giuliano in a Huffington Post article 'Yes, We Really Do Judge Books By Their Covers', explains how, color, font and image all effect our buying decision. It doesn't seem to matter how good, bad or popular the book is. It comes down to how appealing the cover is. So, when you have an appetite for reading, keep this in mind. You might just pick up a bust.

It seems from all of this it is pretty impossible to find a book you will find interesting. I suggest that there are more books you should read in this world than is humanly possible. So, as to not overload you with descriptions, I will leave a few book suggestions with a only a one word adjective to describe it. Then, you can decide.

 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon - Englightening
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving - Insightful
1984 by George Orwell - Thought-provoking (technically, one word)
The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursala K. Le Guin - Memorable
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - SNAFU
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - Heart-tugging
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami -Weird

And by the way, pretty cool covers.

Post from TheBookCellars, used, new and vintage books online

Are books worth reading?

The BookCellars About Books

Are books worth reading?

www.thebookcellars.com new, used and vintage books

Recently, I came across a blog on a site (from several years ago!) by the self-confessed conservative blogger Jon Swift (http://jonswift.blogspot.com/). He wrote an article entitled ‘Who Needs Books?’ I thought it would be a perspective of why books are so important, but after a little reading found this paragraph which states:

For a long time I have been saying that actually reading books is overrated. Now I have an unlikely ally: librarians. The librarians of Fairfax County, Virginia, have reinvented the idea of the library for the 21st century. “A book is not forever,” says Sam Clay, the director of the system. “If you have 40 feet of shelf space taken up by books on tulips and you find that only one is checked out, that’s a cost.” So Clay has set out to purge from Fairfax Public Libraries all 40 feet of tulip books, which were apparently purchased during the great Tulip Mania of the 17th century. But it’s not just books on tulips he’s tossing into the dustbin of history. Aided by a computer program that earmarks books that haven’t been checked out in two years, he has ruthlessly weeded out outdated works by such long-dead, irrelevant authors as Virgil, Aristotle, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and many others, all to make room for ten more copies of the latest bestseller by John Grisham.”

What caught my eye here was not that Fairfax County Libraries were purging books (that is only natural with the number of books published each year and the limited capacity of local libraries) but his ironically satirical comment (I’ll come to that later) on ‘long-dead irrelevant authors’ to be replaced by the likes of John Grisham. As if John Grisham is a lesser contributor to the world body of knowledge, he makes it seem as though people only read tosh. I would argue that John Grisham is a fair contender in the literature game on par with Aristotle. So is it fair to ditch Aristotle in favor of Grisham? That depends. Just think back to the popular reading of the day. There was John Dunne’s 16th-century erotic Elegy XXIX: ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ ‘ who Carloyn Korman of the New Yorker (february 14, 2013) says of Dunne ‘was a rake and a bawd’; Johnathon Swift’s 18th-century and horrific baby eating satire ‘Modest Proposal’; Jane Austen’s 18th-century naughty novels; and Joyce’s 20th-century nearly banned Ulysses. Imagine, pamplets, poems and novels, once popular, that have something to say, if you only care to look. Often, however, you’d be surprised how often we use what other people wrote about.

John Dunne in his literotica wrote: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself..’, and ‘any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ Common phrases penned centuries ago that probably still hold weight even to people who don’t like to read. But all universal truths move on and are copied, transformed or corrupted, but the crux of the meaning is still the same. These metaphysical poets, like Dunne, are known for their ability to ‘startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an extended metaphor known as conceit’. It is the power of language that makes books great.

Publishers have long taken the liberty of rewriting classics into simple children’s books. While the language is simplified, the books are no less valuable and no less important. They are just popular books books for the masses that no one seems to recognize as classics. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, De Foe’s Robinson Crusoe, Shelley’s Frankenstein and Stoker’s Dracula, and Verne’s First Man in the Moon have become mass entertainment; they are, on the surface fun, adventurous books for kids and adults alike, but underneath, satirical commentary wielded against an immoral government, a survival journal praising the values of monarchy and conservative middle class values, or feminist, political and industrial revolution commentary in the Gothic novels and a scientifically real possibility of going to the moon. But we wouldn’t have that without the seed that germinated an idea.

Isaac Newton wrote “if I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. It is because of the writings of Aristotle, Plato, De Cartes, and Locke that we have individuals who are not content to be serfs but who instead decided that maybe they could do more than want to do to something interesting, they could actually do it. Their books made it possible. And if the popular books like Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Dan Brown and John Grisham replaced Aristotle, and those same books offer up an idea, a thought, an imaginative impulse, then they are every bit as valuable as the unread ‘boring’ classics.

If you are not trained to read classics like Aristotle, Virgil and Locke, no matter. It is from these writers that words live on whether they are in books from Gulliver to Green eggs and Ham. So, I would argue that without Aristotle we would not have Grisham. And one good thing for the writer of the blog, even though his boring books from Fairfax Library were binned, the ideas will live on through Grisham and others like him. Conceit , irony and satire might be innate, but my guess is the author learned it from books.

thebookcellars.com