Recommending books

I read a column recently by Laura Miller of Salon.com about the Art of Recommending Book that led me to think how easy that was when we were young. My entire childhood experience was about sharing books and music. Have you read this, have you heard that? It was a time when one didn’t have to worry about books coming back because they usually did. (Stealing from friends started later in the teen years, a habit that often stretched to adulthood.) So stacks of The Famous Five, Secret Seven, Hardy Boy -- the boys never read Nancy Drew for some reason, we were sexist that way -- and Biggles (to name a few) changed hands rapidly. Later, it was Agatha Christie, Leslie Charteris (whose real name was Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin and was born in Singapore), Micky Spillane, Earl Stanley Gardner, Ian Fleming -- gosh, there were so many. Then all that stopped as if the music suddenly died. So, what happened? I have wondered about that. I suspect what happened was adulthood.

Laura Miller says: ‘Amazon and other online merchants have harnessed mighty algorithms to run their "If you enjoyed that, you might like this ..." suggestion engines, but these are still crude instruments.’ Interestingly, I have not bought a single book recommended to me by a robot in the last ten years I have been buying a from Amazon. But then, I might be the freak here. Is there a survey to show the percentage of buyers who purchase the books that are suggested? Or is it only a ‘nice’ feature?

Then there are the Booker and Whitbread (now Costa) book awards. Unfortunately, it has been several years since I have been excited by anything on their lists. I don’t think I am alone, though. A story on The Telegraph which I reported here says (to summarise): only Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach did well (according to Nielsen BookScan August 18 figures) selling 110, 615 copies. Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist sold 2918 copies and Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip,2802 copies. In fact, the five finalists' combined sales, besides Ian McEwan's, came to 10,155 copies. (These figures were released before the winner was announced.) Maybe it was an unusual year, but I think not. The figure seem to suggest that books by the usual suspects still sell. Is the role of Booker Prize (and other such awards) as the arbiter of good taste in books, over then?

So what turns readers on? Newspapers, magazine and blogs? As a bookseller for ten years, I’d say that the impact of reviews are minimal, except to create awareness. Yes, there are those who come in with cutouts of reviews, bestseller lists or titles they read about, but these are a minority. What does get a book going are the word-of-mouth recommendation. “This book is damn chun man. You have to read it,” as we did when we were kids. Or if it’s a book the government has made a fuss over, like Chin Peng or The Malaysian Maverick. (That never hurts sales.)

As an independent bookshop, one of our functions is to recommend books. This is the part we enjoy the most, particularly when the customer comes back for more. Having said that, recommending books is an art. We normally start with two questions: “What are you reading now?” and, “Who are your favourite authors?” The answers to these help narrow things down considerably. Then the next question will be, “Do want something similar or would you like to try something a little different?” At this point you might detect a little panic in some cases, because of the word ‘different’. “What are these weirdos going to suggest now?” People do like things to remain the same. Forever. That’s why books by usual suspects continue to sell, and that’s why publishers continue to churn them out.

The other problem is -- and one can blame the Booker and other prize committees for it -- the idea that good books are either difficult to read, boring or both. Unfortunately, this notion is also promoted by many literary types, especially reviewers. Our first criteria for a good read is the story. Second comes the part that is a source of much debate and disagreement: is it well written? We have discussed this in our previous posts. We like simple straightforward language. Elegance is a bonus. Ostentatious and overly florid language will be regarded the same as Corinthian columns in Taman Melawati: with disdain. Third, is added value -- is it a slice of life, a comment on the human condition, or does it contain little known information?

Good books are certainly not difficult to read, but not all readers are equal. Some read more than others. So throwing someone into the deep end is not helpful regardless of how much we like a particular book.

Salon.com