The unique attraction of reading lists

No matter how manically I organise my bookshelves and rework reading lists, I never cease to be staggered by the question, “What good books have you read recently?” It’s a question configured to throw me into an anxiety attack, a minute or two of wrestling with myself to account for my favourite pastime, and I have to take recourse to, “Many books, but the names will come to me in a bit.” As they do, most coherently — only to elude me the next time the question is asked. It may not necessarily be connected, but I am endlessly fascinated with others’ reading lists. They make me want to read books afresh, in an altogether new sequence as suggested by the next person who offers advice, or whose bookshelves I sneakily memorise.

By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life (Henry Holt and Co, edited by Pamela Paul) collects a series of interviews from The New York Times with leading writers, and occasionally non-writers, about the books that they are reading, those that have shaped them, those they’d recommend and those they’d have you avoid. These are not long-winded The Paris Review-style conversations, with their compelling back and forth on how well sharpened a pencil must be to be in the writing zone, or at what angle the rays of sunlight must hit your notebook, before moving on to more literary themes. These are easy-breezy, Proust questionnaire-type interviews, but are nonetheless loaded with tips on how to organise your thoughts and talk about your own reading.

No-go zones: Work out what you will not read. J.K. Rowling says she does not read chick lit, fantasy, or science fiction. Jeffrey Eugenides says: “Whenever I try to read a thriller or a detective novel I get incredibly bored, both by the language and the narrative machinery.”

It’s not just genres, specific books can stump folks. P.J. O’Rourke couldn’t care that he was not able to finish Ian McEwan’s Saturday, and John Grisham could not make it through Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And then there is an entire archive on James Joyce’s Ulysses, and the world of readers can be neatly divided between those who see exactly why it’s the most acclaimed novel of the twentieth century, and those who cannot figure out what the fuss is about.

One-book-at-a-time readers: By all accounts, this is a rare species. Donna Tartt always has “a dozen books going”, and it goes with the territory that the list of books she’s currently reading is offered in a breathless rush. But her list provides a clue to the many-books-at-a-time readers: they’ll always have a “comfort” book going alongside an otherwise indeterminate mix. Tartt’s, at the time of interview, is Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.

Unique markers: By the Book’s most intriguing question is, “What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?” Somehow the answer reflects more on how the interviewee sees herself, and curiously these “surprise” presences are not usually mentioned in lists of favourite books. Hilary Mantel has “stacks of books on cricket”. Malcolm Gladwell says he has “several hundred” novels with “spy” in the title. Lee Child confessed to “even” enjoying Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel. Though why Sting would presume that anybody would be surprised to find the complete works of P.G. Wodehouse on his — on anybody’s shelf — is mystifying.

Unread books: This is a tough one, and should you want to impress friends and acquaintances, be sure you have a really solid, well-known book/writer set aside to offer when asked for gaps in your reading. Do not confuse this with the fluff of no-go zones. So, Richard Dawkins answers Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Gary Shteyngart says Dickens’s Bleak House.

The next book: Not be confused as the one of many being currently read. The well-read person will always know what she is reading next, and just so you are not lost for options, feel free to pick from the well-considered list of unread books. Elizabeth Gilbert says Ulysses. Lee Child opts for Austen’s Emma, and Jonathan Franzen for the last four volumes of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. And John Irving? “I plan what I write, not what I read.”

Books to be re-read: For a compulsive re-reader like me, this is my favourite part of any “reading interview”. As Marilynne Robinson puts it, “I tend to think of the reading of any book as preparation for the next reading of it.”

Andrew Solomon picks Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, and Ann Patchett talks of enjoying rereading James’s The Ambassadors.

mini.kapoor@thehindu.co.in