A Fortress, and How We Choose Books

Feb 12, 2024

View of medieval fortress: a stone wall, an octagonal chapel, a church spire, a tower. Beyond are sunlit clouds.

This is a cellphone picture I took back in mid-December of Belgrade's fortress, Kalemegdan. The fortress stands on a ridge above where two rivers, the Danube and the Sava, meet. That’s a view to the south, from along a fortification wall. It’s one of my favorite places to walk around in and explore. Every cobblestone drips with history, starting with Romans in the second century and with many a battle, siege, and transformation since then, layer upon layer.

It got me thinking about a subject with much smaller stakes, at least compared to all that history: the first stone that connects a book to a reader.

Something nudges us into deciding to jump on and spend hours on a reader journey—a journey we know is made up, fictional, just marks on a page. Does the cover pull us in? The Goodreads rating? Word of mouth? Stacks of books beckon as we walk into Barnes & Noble, as do suggestions from Amazon’s recommendation algorithm. So much to choose from!

I tend to jump around in genres as a reader and what I’m in the mood for depends on many a thing. I don’t really read reviews. Some covers catch my eye more than others. I’ll glance at the back-page blurb or the Amazon description. From all that possibility floating by, I lay the first stone. It’s pretty basic: I read the opening paragraph, maybe the one after it too, and some kind of magic happens and that’s how I know I’ll reach for my wallet. I used to do it right there in the bookstore, open to the first page and read. Nowadays I download a sample on my Kindle, which takes all of thirty seconds, and take a look.

Judging a book by a single paragraph seems akin to judging it by its cover. And, yes, I do occasionally end up DNF-ing a book (Did Not Finish). But generally speaking, if I connect to the book from the first page in some undefinable way, I’ll end up reading it to the last page.

I tend to avoid fiction while doing my own writing or editing because sometimes the other author’s rhythm starts to seep in and I find myself spelling honor as honour and so forth. I did, however, just finish a two-week edit of the book I’ve been working on — it’s getting pretty close to where it needs to be; this is the polishing stage — which means that it’s time to be a reader again. I happened to see Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library mentioned on social media. The cover caught my attention, or maybe it was the title, or the quote at the top, “A treat for readers who love books about books.” Definitely promising. I downloaded a sample and read a bit. Houston, we have a go.

How do you choose your next read? Let me know by replying to this email or, if you’re reading this here on Cosmic Tea, leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading!

Neve

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