118. First Impressions

The other day I was browsing collections of the best book covers from the past few years.  I generally disagreed with the choices. But I like the idea of recognizing cover art as a critical part of the way a book is presented to the world.  Those of us who buy books in bookstores do, in large part, judge them by their covers, at least initially.

Book covers are invitations.  At least good ones are.  The colors and textures and layouts tell us that a certain kind of experience awaits us just inside.  They invite us to take part in that experience.  Once a book has caught our eye, and we've gotten past the blurbs on the back, it's time to dig in and see if what's inside is as promising as the invitation made it sound.

This is where I part ways with most books.  In academics, like in sales and writing and lots of other things, you hear a lot about the importance of having a good "elevator pitch" for your product.  Whether you're selling your research or a vacuum cleaner, you ought to be able to tell a stranger about it in the time in takes to share an elevator ride, in a way that makes them wanna know more.  We assume people are stingy with the time they'll spend listening to you pitch something they don't know they have a need for.

I'm this way with books.  My roommate once told me she would give a book a few chapters to catch her attention before she put it down and walked away.  Like getting to a party early and finding only a few people there.  You stick around because you expect it to get packed as soon as the clock strikes midnight.  I do that with parties.  But not books.

I'm just a hard sell with books.  Fifteen seconds.  That's all you get.  If you can't get me in the first page... if you can't make me want to turn the page, you're done.  Very rarely I'll force myself past an uninspiring first page onto page ten or twelve or sixteen.  This happens because I've heard that this book is magic, and that everyone who has eyes should read it.  But I've never finished a book that way.  They all eventually get put down.

In part I'm this way because, as I've said, I don't read for entertainment, at least not purely.  So there has to be something compelling about a book to keep my interest.  There can't just be the promise that if I stay with it long enough to become invested in the characters, something really interesting will happen to them.  And even then, I'm reminded of the best fiction I've read and how it captured my attention from the opening lines.

There's a stark difference (for me) between a voice that is telling me what is happening and one that is telling me what the writer wants me to imagine is happening.  The former makes for an effortless reading experience.  It's as if the author somehow managed to write in the native tongue of my imagination.  There is no need for translation.  The mind is scarcely aware that it is suspending any sort of rational disbelief at all.  What is there is simply happening.

This is very different than the way I experience most books.  I usually find myself trying to picture the characters - their hair, and bodies and facial expressions - just the way the author intends, so that I get the story they want me to get.  I put my imagination to work.  It feels like I'm doing the author a favor, in the short-run, expecting that there'll be some pay-off later on that makes it all worth it.  I'm never able to hold out that long.  Though I should say that I've long considered forcing myself through some well-loved work of fiction just to see for sure if I wouldn't enjoy it in the end and be glad I put in the work.  Maybe someday.

For now I hold out for the books that hook me with the opening line and pull me, almost in a trance-like state, from page to page, until I wonder where the last hundred pages went; the books whose pages turn themselves.

Over the next few weeks (and beyond that as I find new ones), I hope to share some of the opening lines/paragraphs/pages of my favorite books.  I can't exactly say what it is about them that makes them work for me.  Maybe me and authors shared a Myers-Briggs type or something, who knows?  But they are magic to me.  Maybe someone else will like them too.