T i m e O u t

The Reader

The Reader

I wonder whether there are more books or people in the world. The world is drowning in books. But, like people, there’s always room for one more and when a really special one comes along it’s as if we’ve all been waiting for it.

Why would anyone want to go writing another book? Nobody alive can read even a fraction of the books that should be read and we keep adding more and more.

And now those who are aren’t writing books are writing blogs. Those diaries where you feel good about yourself because you’ve told the world what you think about something like “The Reader”. We like to think that the whole world is holding its breath for our book or our blog.

And here I am thinking maybe I should write a book! Why? What would make my book hop off the shelf and into someone’s hand? Imagine! Someone walking into a bookshop, ignoring the rows of books calling out to them and going straight to the exact aisle and shelf for My Book.

Not to mention online book ordering. No bookshop smell, no reverential silence. No, no. Give me a bookshop any day.These bookshops arrange their shelves so neatly. Most people go to their favourite section. All about Nissan engines or Goats-milk Dieting or Gardening so they rarely just happen to be near a section on, let’s say, how to travel around Tibet on €100.

But that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? If everything is clearly mapped then nobody will accidentally come across a book because they haven’t the time or the energy to browse. That will only happen at the airport when your plane is delayed.

And another thing. Maybe there should be a section called Readers who are Characters in Novels. A lot of people who are writing today about suburbia, sex, slime and crime are really writing about  people they know, meaning their own potential readers. Some women read “chick lit” novels because they want to see if they can recognise a character as someone they know in real life. I wonder who that character is based on. For some it’s an obsession.

I once met a man who offered me and my Italian fiancé a meal and spoke the whole evening about his dear, dead wife and about his only daughter Patricia who was in Italy. He gave us her address to look her up even though she was at the other end of The Boot. Well, if I wrote a book, he might well be a character in it because I’ve never forgotten him. He offered us the meal when we needed one and we offered him a way to pass one evening of his long, lonely life.  But if he wrote a book I wonder would I be in it? He probably wouldn’t even remember the incident.

So we may all be unconsciously auditioning for a part in a book. And we may never know what light the writer painted us in. Writers can do with us as they please and there are no copyright issues. Maybe in my book Patricia’s Dad could be trying to coax unsuspecting teenagers into a worldwide porn ring. No limits.

What does a reader really want from a book?

We all know about buying the how-to books or college text books or best-sellers. But what about other books?

I think it all goes back to our childhood and how we were introduced to books, whether they created magic for you, whether someone took the time to read a book for you and let you live it, whether you were encouraged to read or if you were considered a lazy so-and-so for wasting you time with your nose in a book.

Books have to take us to where they took us in adolescence.

One of my treasured possessions in boarding school was a torch and the batteries to keep it going. A friend who would lend you her torch so that you could finish a good book after ‘lights-out’ was a friend for life.

Then you learn to discern. Sharing opinions on books, advising each other, name-dropping on books that only a restricted group would have read. D.H. Lawrence started to circulate and it would become a matter of life or death to get our hands on The Virgin and the Gypsy and you steamrolled through the pages during religion class to get to The Pages.

And that leads to the question: Can we really share a book if the characters are mentally created by each one of us from the pointers the writer gives us?

What if writers should give their readers points of reference. As if we were watching a film. Let me explain. Let’s say I’m writing a thriller. The plot is simple. The bad guys want to transfer the Book of Kells, stolen from the Trinity College Dublin library, to their buyer in Tokyo so they hire a good looking “Western” couple of professionals.

It could read: The customs agents watched in admiration as the handsome couple manoeuvred their trolley of  black suitcases through to the airport arrivals exit. Hand in hand, aware only of each other. He, tall, slim, elegant and tanned. She, ravishingly beautiful, her perfect body turned heads. The blond hair that gleamed and flowed down her slender back made fingers ache to caress it. They sailed past the hypnotized agents and sighed as they were bundled into a waiting car. Another mission accomplished.

We have all formed an idea of the couple. From a line-up of twenty men and twenty women all equally handsome we would all create our own couple combinations. Perhaps quite different from what the writer had intended.

But what if it read: The customs agents watched in admiration as the handsome couple manoeuvred their trolley of  black suitcases through to the airport arrivals exit. Hand in hand, aware only of each other. His Liam Neeson masculinity a perfect complement to her Gwynyth beauty. They sailed past the hypnotized agents and sighed as they were bundled into a waiting car. Another mission accomplished.

So much verbal economy. So much precision. But alas, so much less creative.