Once upon a time I would stare hopelessly at the fiction section of my university library, trying to work out what I could afford with the relentless incentives Blackwells pushed at eager students. That’s where I discovered the desperately whimsical tone of Ali Smith’s & Other Stories, or the lingering characters of Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries.
But these days I have followed the rest of the world into the efficiencies of the online realm, which means I need new methods to find immersive reads.
Now, I get sent to Instagram to read (see?) posts lamenting overflowing TBRs, jokes about cheating on those TBRs as other books flutter by — each and every book pile desperately pretty — the Oliver Bonas of the library.
Me, Instagram, other readers: we all really want to believe that the proverb about judging a book by its cover can be disproven. What else can possibly tell us whether we will enjoy a book before we are past the intros, the contents, the acknowledgements — and probably well after we’re past chapter two?
What a visually appealing stream. If I follow and engage with it, Instagram tells me that “book lover” is my tribe. And I am a book lover. I am. It’s just that, even though this modern channel is no more about book covers than my old stare at shelf reveries were, something isn’t resonating with me. Everything is just a bit too insistent, a bit too certain of my joy.
Reading has always been my secret world. It is the final escape once I’m in my pyjamas and trying to shake my legs to warm up the duvet. I might have been on Netflix in the previous hours. I might have urged my partner to click on next episode when a particular cliffhanger or tempo has left me wanting to overstay my bedtime. But despite television’s artistic accomplishments, it’s only when I eventually hit the pillow and press the on button on my Kindle that I know I have properly relaxed.
I don’t know why this is the case. I’m sure there’s a scientist out there who would say it has something to do with the convergence between text and imagination — the fact that our brain has to fill in the gaps — making it a more engaging form of entertainment than absorbing someone else’s interpretation. This is, perhaps, why readers have been known to get quite irate about what colour Elizabeth Bennet’s hair is supposed to be.
And maybe that’s where the appealing Instagram posts fall short. It’s not the irony of presenting black-and-white text in visual form. It’s the buzzwords, the adverbs, the punchy sales language. I see no end of pretty books, but I don’t feel informed as to which might become my new best friend, or bring me those few minutes of happy escapism at the end of a long day.
Perhaps that is why I remain resistant to certainty when it comes to books. The ones that have mattered most to me did not arrive with instructions, or assurances, or even a sense that I would enjoy them in any predictable way. They unfolded slowly. They asked something of me. They trusted me to stay.
I don’t yet know how to reliably find those books. I am still circling prizes – occasionally as a judge – careful curation, hoping for the moment when something quietly asserts itself and refuses to be put down. But I do know how it feels when it happens — when a voice becomes a companion, and the day finally loosens its grip. Those are the books I’m listening for now, even if I don’t yet have the language, or the system, to explain how they find me.
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