The Broke and the Bookish has posited a difficult top ten list for this Tuesday–The Top Ten Books I’d Hand to Someone Who Says He/She Doesn’t Like to Read. Being a bookish nerd who surrounds herself with, you guessed it, other equally bookish nerds, I don’t often run across folks who don’t like to read. I do, however, happen to be married to one.
Here’s his normal reaction to a shelf full of books. Unless it’s filled with technical manuals, beekeeping regulations, or outdoorsy stuff, he flat out ain’t interested. Honestly, for a gifted musician, he sure does dislike anything the slightest bit artistic.
Most of the things I adore, he detests. For example, look at his reaction when I tried to show him a great book on the history of Europe I used when I was a teacher.
The secret to getting a person over bibliophobia is to lure him in with books that might fit his interests. Observe……
Don’t go for the classics…especially the one that he swears, beyond a shadow of a doubt, made him utterly loathe an activity he once enjoyed.
Just because a book is “manly,” it doesn’t mean he’ll be willing to go for it. He gave me the “Really!?” face when I offered him tales replete with swashbuckling and adventure on the high seas. Nope—Moby Dick, The Three Musketeers, and Don Quixote held no interest for him. I think the sheer size off each was a turn off as well.
When I mentioned works that were dystopian in nature, his ears perked up a little. I’ve been trying to sell him on the genre because I really want him to go see The Hunger Games with me next month. (Also, the fact that they were shorter reads overall didn’t hurt!)
1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 were all taken under consideration. That copy of The Hobbit you see in the back was there for the sake of nostalgia. He’s considering re-reading it in order to be ready for the movie when it comes out on December 14 2012!!!!! (Not that we’re excited or anything…)
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So, you see, it’s easier than you think. It might require a little patience and some creative salesmanship, but a person can be brought back from the wordless Dark Side.
Here are ten great books to try with your reluctant reader:
1. The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King—I read this one when I was a wee tot and loved it. It’s his only true fantasy book, it’s relatively short, and it has a very visual and action driven plot.
2. Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz—With a protagonist named Slim MacKenzie who hides in a traveling circus so he can kill the monsters in human skin that only he can see…what’s not to like!?
3. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks—It’s written in a very no-nonsense style and is packed full of description and fun illustrations. If nothing else, your reader will be prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse if it does occur. (It’s something I’ve become increasingly worried about seeing as how I now live in the same city as the CDC. Eeep!)
4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins—Say what you will, but I actually enjoyed this book and the one that came after it. Mockingjay left a lot to be desired, but what else is new? There are so few truly perfect trilogies.
5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote—This one is an odd combination of true crime and the fine style usually reserved for fiction. Capote makes this one a book you don’t want to read but you have to finish, if only to try to understand the “why” behind the horrible actions he details.
6. The Hound of the Baskervilles: A Sherlock Holmes Novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—Due to the popularity of the movies (starring the oh-so-unbelievably sexy Robert Downey, Jr.), this one should be an easy sell. It’s action driven with just enough description for you to feel stupid for having missed the obvious clues that Holmes describes to Watson in the concluding chapters. If this is too much, you can also start them off on his short stories.
7. From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming—Any of the Bond novels make for great reads. They’re a little more stylized than the films, but they’re fun reads. People already have a relationship with Agent 007 and know his world, so there isn’t as much fighting to get into the world of the novel as there might be otherwise.
8. Johnny Tremain by Esther Hawkins Forbes—I fell in love with this book in middle school, and I wasn’t the only one. It was a book that made history truly come alive, and it probably explains my life-long obsession with the Revolutionary War.
9. Lord of the Flies by William Golding—I tend to like darker fiction, but this work stunned me when I read it. I kept thinking, There’s no way kids resort to this so quickly. However, looking around the world, it’s pretty easy to see that Golding was on to something. Without rules set up and enforced by polite society, the darker forces in our nature do come out to play. This work is allegorical, which means that everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is a symbol. However, you can read it and still get a lot out of it not working through the symbolic meanings of people, places, and things.
10. How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster—This one might be a good pick for someone who doesn’t like reading because he or she “doesn’t get it.” This book helped me teach several Advanced Placement Literature classes filled with kids who wanted to go deeper into literature but just didn’t feel equipped. Many of them said that this book gave them a working vocabulary to tackle books that scared the crap out of them before. The fact that two of the chapters are titled “It’s All About Sex” and “…Except Sex” didn’t hurt when I was trying to pique their collective interest either. 🙂
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I wrote this list with my reluctant reader in mind, but selecting a list of books is pretty easy for someone you know and love. With a little thought and creative enticement, you can go from this…
to THIS!!!
2. Jane Austen–With six complete novels, you think I’d be satisfied. No, cracker. No. I’m not. Austen had a wit and an acerbic humor that has just never been matched by another author. Anyone who tries to write like her or take up her mantle and write another “Pemberly” book or something of the sort is begging for trouble. Reading a knock-off Austen book is like eating generic cereal from a bag when you really want Froot Loops.
5. Harper Lee–I fell in love with To Kill a Mockingbird and always wanted to read something else by this wonderful author, but there is quite literally nothing else. I know she and Truman Capote were good friends and that it galled him when she won the Pulitzer for it. A book that good deserves a sibling. I’d love to see what she’d write now regarding race—considering what’s changed (and what hasn’t). Also, to see Atticus Finch in action again would simply make my decade. Seriously, is there any more wonderful or admirable a character than that gentlemanly Southern lawyer who was a crack shot but wouldn’t play football for the Methodists?
8. Elizabeth Kostova–I loved The Historian. I “read it” on unabridged audiobook when I was teaching on three different college campuses and down time/drive time to deal with. I was late for my own class on more than one occasion because I was desperate to get through the end of a chapter. Twenty-two discs, and I was dying for more. I know she wrote The Swan Thieves a year or two ago, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it. However, she has a great grasp of description and of history, so I don’t doubt anything she writes would be interesting. A book like The Historian that focused on the Frankenstein would be super.
9. George R.R. Martin–I know, I know. He just released Dance With Dragons this year, and I should be happy about that. However, like Oliver, I have audacity to ask for more. Why? Because if he doesn’t get the remaining members of the Stark family back together soon, I think I shall scream. It’s almost like his story has turned into the possessed broom from Fantasia, and the more he tries to tie up loose ends, the more they fray into other plot lines. Seriously, I don’t think this book is ever going to end… which is both a good and a bad thing.
10. The Apostle Paul–If I could meet anyone (besides Jesus, of course) and share a meal with him in order to pick his brain about all things biblical, it would have to be Paul. I know he’s the most “popular” of all the New Testament writers, but I feel a certain kinship with him because of my illness. (In fact, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 is my testimony/life verse. Go check my 
Moby Dick by Herman Melville—The first book I’m excited about reading fulfills the requirement for number two. I’m not excited about this book for the same reason I am others on the list. I think, more than anything, I relish the challenge. I was the student in school who typically picked the most difficult book she could get her hands on for a reading project. (I even took on the challenge of reading Ulysses in two weeks just because I could. If you want to hear what that experience was like, read a 
Insurgent by Veronica Roth—This one is due out May 2012. I read the first book in this trilogy, Divergent, late in 2011 and loved it. It’s YA fiction, so it falls short in some areas like character development and vocabulary. However, the plot was intriguing enough that I finished it in record time. If she can continue to play nicely with the intricate story she began weaving, this should be a great read. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes The Hunger Games for pure action, a strong female protagonist, and an interesting love story. Personally, I tend to like works that are dystopian in nature, so this one was right up my alley. If you’re like me and enjoy books like 1984, Brave New World, Blade Runner, and The Road, this is for you.
Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore—Another YA read that’s due out in May of 2012. Books like these are my weakness; I simply can’t turn them down. This one, also slightly dystopian, is fantasy based rather than sci-fi, which is nice for someone like me who would rather read Tolkien than Verne. Unlike Fire, the second book in the series, which was actually a prequel to the first book, Graceling, this one is set eight years after the first and is a continuation of its events. Therefore, all the characters like Po, Katsa, and (of course) Bitterblue will be back in action with all sorts of evil plans to thwart and goodness to defend in all seven realms. This one is a little edgier than most YA fiction, and the plots hang together very well. There’s quite a bit of “girly love stuff,” but it never overwhelms the book as a whole.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho—This one has been out for awhile, since 2006 in fact, but I’ve never read it. It sounds a bit like Gabriel Garcia Marquez to me–a sort of coming-of-age plot with a dash of magical realism thrown in. However, unlike Marquez, I think this one stands a chance of being mystical with a chance of promise, a smidgen of hope. Quite literally, a young shepherd boy, goes on a quest across continents to find his dreams–a bildungsroman of the highest order. I’ve heard many good things about this one, so it should be a good read.
The Painted Veil by M. Somerset Maugham—I saw the film version of this book starring my boyfriend, Edward Norton, a year or two ago and fell in love with it. I’m eager to see what the original text is like because I know, without a doubt, as great as that film is, the book is bound to be ten times better. Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, it follows Kitty Fane, a love-starved Englishwoman married to a doctor. When he finds out about her adultery, he forces her to go with him into the heart of a cholera epidemic. It is there that she gains a true perspective of purpose, love, and devotion. I can’t wait to finally read this as Maugham intended!
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett—I’m a huge fan of Bogart, and I love film noir and gumshoe detective stuff. For some reason, however, I’ve not read much of it. Sam Spade is that archetypal character women have always wanted and men have always wanted to be just like. As the summary on Goodreads says (and I love this!), “Spade is bigger (and blonder) in the book than in the movie, and his Mephistophelean countenance is by turns seductive and volcanic. Sam knows how to fight, whom to call, how to rifle drawers and secrets without leaving a trace, and just the right way to call a woman ‘Angel’ and convince her that she is. He is the quintessence of intelligent cool, with a wise guy’s perfect pitch.” Sounds just right for a Friday night at home with a glass of wine, yes?
The Enders Hotel by Brandon R. Schrand—This is a non-fiction work that won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize in 2008. It is his memoir about growing up in the boom town of Soda Springs, Idaho and watching as different people came and went in the hotel/bar/cafe his parents owned there called, of course, The Enders. He essentially tells his story as well as those of the people who stayed in his family’s hotel, and the work is therefore dark and hopeful by turns. I think it is a fascinating idea for a memoir. After all, a hotel is a temporary place, a moving on place, and how can one ever establish a sense of home and of self in such a transitory space? It’s also interesting to me because of my people watching tendencies; a hotel is a fascinating place to spend time observing people, the most interesting walking and talking stories of all.
Cello Playing for Music Lovers: A Self-Teaching Method by Vera Matlin Jiji—I’ve decided that 2012 is the year I learn to play a second musical instrument. One of the two I’ve always wanted to learn is the cello, and there are several at my church that my orchestra director is willing to loan me. It’s not that I’ve mastered the French horn by any stretch of the imagination. I doubt anyone ever has. I’m just longing for something new, and this seems like it is in the realm of possibility. I might never be good enough to play cello in our orchestra, but I’d like to give it a try. This book came with the highest overall recommendations, so we’ll see how it goes. *fingers crossed*
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood—I truly enjoyed The Handmaid’s Tale and some of the short fiction I’ve read by Ms. Atwood. I met her a little over a year ago when she came to lecture at Emory University, and this was one of the works she mentioned only briefly. (She focused more on books like Oryx and Crake instead due to the fact the lecture series was sci-fi in nature.) However, this one looks too good to pass up. As always, Atwood weaves together at least two novels in one described as “a melancholic account of why writers write–and readers read–and one that frames the different lives told through this book.”