Discriminating Reader

When I was a kid, I was a discriminating reader. I loved choosing which books I would check out. I always read the very first paragraph to decide if the story was worth my while. I can still remember the wonderful sense of power I got as I pictured the author watching breathlessly, waiting to see what I would do: That skinny kid there with her finger in my book, is she going to read it? Is she actually going to check my book out and take it home? I even pictured his or her disappointment on the occasions I decided the book wasn't interesting enough, as I snapped it shut and put it back on the shelf. I was merciless too: no matter how sad the author looked in my mind's eye, if the book didn't suck me right in, I didn't want it anywhere near me.

I used to run through a list in my mind whenever I picked out a book. First and foremost, the book had to be fiction; I had no interest whatsoever in anything that had really happened. Up until I was about thirteen, the book had to be about a girl or girls. When I mistakenly picked up a book with a male protagonist, it went right back on the shelf. Next, I couldn't be bothered with fantastic plot features unless the author sneaked them in after I'd gotten hooked. So if I opened a book and right away saw that there were going to be dragons and fairies, I dropped it fast. If the book started out in a world I could believe in, the odd dragon or fairy was fine, once I was well into the plot. It really helped if the protagonist was unhappy about something or in trouble -- or had to go on an adventure -- and my very favorite plots featured a kid who was a misfit or bullied. Best of all was when there was any kind of travel involved, especially if the protagonist had to travel alone or without adults. Madeleine l'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time ticked all the boxes, and so did Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden.

When I first moved to Japan, finding books in English was a problem. Within the first week, I read everything I'd brought with me. A visit to Kinokuniya Book Store shocked me: books in English were expensive and it wasn't easy to find the less popular titles. Over my first year in Japan, I combed through the books left by other expatriates and we traded back and forth. I learned to reread books I'd especially enjoyed too; after six months, I found I could reread a really good book and invariably find something I'd missed during my first read.

During the next five years overseas, I reread hundreds of books. I also learned to love non-fiction: one dark December day I picked up Rachel Carson's Under the Sea's Wind and was bowled over by the beauty of her prose. I started reading other non-fiction, including memoirs. I was shocked to learn what I had been missing all those years. Whatever I found in English, I would read, even books I might never have touched back in the States. I read detective stories, translated novels, adventure stories for boys, pulp fiction, literary fiction, Harlequin romances, memoirs, comic books, biographies, war stories, travel guides, do-it-yourself books, cook books, and classics. My only criterion was that the books had to be in English.

In short, I became an undiscriminating reader; I knew I couldn't afford to be fussy. I was the reading equivalent of a Clean Plate Club star member: whatever I got my hands on, I finished it. Even when it was God-awful.

For the next several decades, I did this: I read just about every book that came my way. In some respects, this eclectic reading has stood me in good stead: I discovered writers and genres I might never have gotten to know. But it kept me from concentrating on quality, from thinking about what I was reading and how it might have been written better.

Then I started to write myself. I started the hard way, making stupid, classic beginner mistakes: telling, not showing, meandering, rambling, being inconsistent, putting in unnecessary details, leaving out essential information, and so on. And writing has entirely changed the way I read.

It has taken me a long time to get to this point, but I now begin books and don't always finish them. A few months back, I got to the end of a novel and threw it across the room. It was didactic, pretentious, rambling, and unfocused, and I didn't know who I was more irritated with, the author for writing it or myself for actually finishing it. Last week, I stopped reading a novel after forty tedious pages: all of the characters were having too good a time. Everybody was getting along, lessons were being effortlessly learned, and I was being bored rigid. Three days ago, I picked up a book, read three paragraphs, and put it right back on the shelf: the dialogue was stilted and unbelievable. Lucky me, I've got a pile of books up to my knees, and time is too short for books that mediocre.

I've become that fussy kid again, standing in the library, holding a book, a frown on my face as I think Is this really good enough for me? Do I really want to invest my precious time in reading this? Yes, I've become that fussy, discriminating kid again.

And that's definitely the kid I want to write for.

Bringing Ishiguro to the Masses

While helping out at the school book fair recently, I was surprised at the number of children who bought books they could easily have checked out at the library. I mentioned this to another mother who was helping out, but my American accent must have gotten in the way because she misunderstood me. "I like buying books!" she said, giving me a rather supercilious look. "I buy books all the time, and I'm never happier than when I'm reading a good book!"

I assured her that she had misunderstood me. That I too read books, getting through several a week, but tended to buy only the ones I couldn't find in the library. We then got to talking about our favorite authors and she told me that hers were three very prolific writers -- two Americans and one Briton -- whose names I will not note here because I am a weenie and I do not want to be sued.

Now I'm really not a book snob. I'm not ashamed to admit that I've never read Proust and I find Faulkner a little tiresome. That Henry James gives me a headache (didn't he ever learn how to do paragraphs?) and I am out-and-out bored by John Milton. If I was really a book snob I would hide all those facts from you instead of admitting to them freely and openly. But when this woman mentioned those three particular writers, all of a sudden I felt like an elitist. Because here is the embarrassing truth: I have read the books of all three of these writers and although I blush to admit it, I have pretensions to do better.

I don't deny that these people can write. I don't deny that they can come up with interesting plots, snappy dialogue, and endings that satisfy their readers time after time. I am fully aware that they've done what I have singularly failed to do: honed their craft, marketed their work, and built up a huge readership. I honestly have no illusions about how hard it is to achieve even part of what they have achieved; I am just stubbornly convinced that if I try hard enough and am endlessly patient, I will be able to achieve something more. Something better. I am convinced that my characters won't be so one-sidedly good or bad, their romances will be more believable, and their lifestyles less unrealistically rich-and-famous. (Yeah, I already know: they'll go over like lead balloons, won't they?)

Do I really have it in me to be a better writer than these incredibly successful, bestselling writers? Am I just full of sour grapes because, while lusting after even an iota of their commercial success, I have the sense to know that I will never have one tiny scrap of their selling potential? Who knows? It doesn't even matter: I have this guilty ambition, and I might as well admit it.

I didn't say all that to my fellow book fair helper of course. I just acknowledged that I knew the authors she liked and had read their books too. And I swear to God, I wasn't the least bit snooty about it.

"So who are your favorite authors?" she then asked me. I told her that I liked Kazuo Ishiguro. She stared at me for a few seconds. "Never heard of her," she said flatly. I told her that Ishiguro was a man, that his novel Remains of the Day had been made into a successful film starring Anthony Hopkins, (she'd heard of him), but she commented rather dismissively "I don't read foreign writers."

This needled me. I happen to come from a long line of teachers and missionaries, people who had it in their DNA to try to reach the ignorant and bring The Truth to them, a quality I have inherited in spades, so I told her that Kazuo Ishiguro had lived in the U.K. since he was four, was as fluent in English as it is humanly possible to be, and almost certainly a naturalized British citizen. I said this very politely and I didn't bother to tell her that Ishiguro can write English 500 times better than any of her favorite authors, but my words cut no ice with her. So I got a little mean. I pointed out -- gently! -- that two of her favorite authors were actually Americans, i.e. foreigners, and yet that didn't take away from her reading pleasure, did it?

To this day the woman shies away from me on the street.