Doorways to Enjoyment

Today I'm not going to talk about knitting, or perhaps only tangentially. Last week I had the opportunity to hear Nancy Pearl, of Book Lust fame, speak. I'd heard her a few years ago, when she spoke at a lunch for library friends and staff at my university. I don't remember exactly what her topic was, though I know she spoke about reading when she was growing up, and some of her favorite books, and such. I have a very warm and cozy feeling thinking back on that talk. This time, she had a more directed focus--she was speaking about reader's advisory for adult services librarians. Reader's advisory happens in public libraries, mostly. I work at a university library. I don't get chances to suggest books to readers, or only once in a blue moon. But I was determined to hear her speak again, and once again, it was ever so enjoyable.

Thank you for staying with me this far. I know lots of knitters are readers. Many of us listen to books when we knit. So I hope what I can report from Nancy's session will be of interest. She suggested a very different way to go about suggesting books to readers, a way that you might find illuminating when you think about the kinds of books you tend to gravitate towards. She used a framework of "doorways." She talked about four doorways into which books, both fiction and non-fiction, fit. But first, she had us each list five of our favorite books, so that we could later go back and see which doorways attract us. Perhaps you might want to do this, too?

The doorways she enumerated were:

1. Books with story as the attraction. She mentioned that this is the largest category of books. Many mysteries fit into this category, as do lots of children's books. Dialogue is big in these books, and they tend to be books we think of as page-turners. A number of these books may have a second big doorway. Authors who fit into this category for most readers (some readers may be attracted by other qualities of books in any of these categories, so they aren't hard and fast): John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer, Patricia Cornwell, Clive Cussler, Stephen King. The DaVinci Code fits into this category.

2. The second doorway, and the next biggest, is character. The characters in these books change and develop internally. One good way to find these books is through their titles, which often are the names of characters or describe characters. Think The Time Traveller's Wife, Fortune's Daughter and others by Alice Hoffman, books by Anne Tyler, Richard Russo and Kaye Gibbons.

I am afraid I have to leave you hanging for the moment--it is getting late. I'll detail the other two doorways next time. In the meantime, if you are an avid reader, you might want to think about other authors or books that fit into these two categories. And check your list of favorite books--do they fit into these two categories? Or are your categories yet to come?