Buzzwords and Phrases That Make Me Want to Read (or Avoid) a Book

As part of the top ten tuesday book blogging topic this week, we’re looking at buzzawords or phrases in book marketing that make someone want to read or not read a book. I read a lot of the book press out there, to find things to read, to understand what other writers and thinkers are thinking and writing about, and maybe to also understand what the limited-taste monopoly publishers think will sell most. I am resistant to, but recognize I am absolutely also persuadable by, the book press and book advertisers. These are the descriptors that lead me to want to read or not read.

Phrases that pull me in

A novel of ideas. I want a book that is arguing something as part of the plot, something with a point of view on something. “A novel of ideas” tells me the writer was working through a real problem and that exploration will make me work.

Set in [unfamiliar place/culture]. Studies on fiction and personal development consistently show that readers who are emotionally transported into a story different from their own develop greater capacity for empathy and understanding others’ perspectives, particularly toward people whose lives look nothing like their own. Fiction gives readers access to social contexts and individual experiences they would never encounter otherwise. I believe in this. I like to read to understand more about the world and what makes people the way that they are, so, yes please.

A novel set somewhere I have no framework for, written from inside a culture I do no know, does something that travel journalism and documentary film cannot. The geography, the local social logic, the particular way power moves through a place: I enjoy this kind of puzzle. People talk about books as armchair travel and that is absolutely part of it, but its also more for me, in that a good novel puts you inside someone’s understanding of a place, not just the place itself, and I’m into that.

Experimentally structured / innovative style. A writer who chooses an unusual structure has thought carefully about what the story actually requires, which means they didn’t just write a paint-by-numbers narrative. They picked apart the template for x kind of story, and built something more interesting from the pieces. Actual human lives are rarely linear or tidy, and I want fiction that is honest about that. A fragmented timeline, an unusual point of view, a structure that asks something of the reader: these are signs that the writer was thinking, and that they expect the reader to think too.

Darkly funny / black comedy. Dark funny is a signal I like. It means the writer looked at something genuinely terrible and found the absurdity in it. A book described as black comedy has already told me it is not going to offer easy consolation, but anyway maybe some comic relief, and that is something that is of some consolation to me.

Written over [X] years. Five years. Ten. Anything over a couple, really. A writer who spent years on a novel could not let go until the thing was right, and that kind of patience and determination and dedication to quality is less and less common, and piques my interest.

Phrases that make me say no

Heartwarming. The word is doing exactly what it says. It promises the book will make you feel warm, and that warmth has been the organizing principle. To me it suggests that anything complicated or uncomfortable that could be part of the story has been subordinated to producing that feeling. There is nothing wrong with wanting that; I also crave comfort food sometimes, but I tend to not like the oversimplification or reduction of things to fairytale. My reading life is just organized around different priorities.

Life-affirming. “Life-affirming” tells me someone decided the ending of a story before they wrote the middle. A lot of middles drag on. A middle with a neat ending tied in a bow is the kind of prose that bores me and it not worth the limited time I have for reading.

Oprah’s Book Club. I know Oprah reads. I also know that a lot of what ends up on that list is sponcon, and I’ve had enough disappointing experiences with the actual books to be skeptical. The ones I’ve picked up have tended toward the underdeveloped and the stereotypical, characters flattened into what a certain kind of reader expects them to be. I just think people are more interesting than that.

Ultimately hopeful. The word “ultimately” is the problem. It signals that the darkness was temporary, that the story was always heading somewhere manageable, so the threads of the story tie up once again in a neat and tidy little bow. The reassurance on the way out retroactively makes the difficulty decorative.

A timely reminder that… It means the book has been conscripted into making a point and someone has already decided what that point is. The best books resist that kind of reduction. When I see this phrase I learn more about the reviewer than about the book. Trust me to draw my own conclusions. I don’t need to be spoon fed.

The author comparison: buyer beware

“Fans of [writer] will love this” is a mental shortcut that to me, seems to benefit the publisher more than the reader. The comparison reminds me of knockoff perfume: if you like Obsession, you’ll love this cheaper, chintzier version. Does the compared author even approve of the association? Sometimes it feels like useful information, but more often than not I will reject a book strictly because the publisher used this phrase.

So…

I guess I read to be changed by something. I want books that take the world seriously enough to resist simplifying it, that trust me to sit with difficulty and ambiguity without being walked back to solid ground. I am drawn to writers who thought hard about what they were making, not completing paint-by-number pieces following well-trodden narrative formulas that make big assumptions or plod through typicifcations of people along the way. I am wary of books that have decided how you should feel at the end of them. These are just my preferences, and I recognize they’re different from other readers who may read to reinforce their established beliefs or as comfort and escape from a wicked world. That’s the great thing about books, they can serve as whatever we need them to be.