7 Weird Reading Facts

Got this from ricki.

1. I am very sensitive to typeface. I will NOT read a book if I find the typeface grating or unfriendly. I have bad eyes, too, so a good typeface is important. Penguin Classics USED to have terrible typeface, small, cramped and smudgey – so I would never buy their books. They have now gone through a redesign – and not only do they have some of the best cover art now (their covers used to be kind of stuffy and precious – but now? Brill!!) Some examples here:

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I own a couple of those already – but based only on those gorgeous covers, I want to own Penguin’s version!!

So not only have they recommitted themselves to eye-catching and evocative cover but their typeface has gone through an upgrade as well. I like it much better. It flows with the eye. Vintage International has consistently great typefaces. The Modern Library collection has great typeface – especially for long dense books like Middlemarch or Bleak House.

2. I will never leave a book open, face-down. The thought of it makes me shiver.

3. I can count on one hand the times I have been stranded without a book. Actually, there was one time the other night but that was only because I had finished the book I had in my bag earlier that day so when I had an hour to kill later that night, I was reduced to fiddling around with my blackberry and answering emails as the wind whipped across Houston Street, as opposed to losing myself in a book. I ALWAYS have a book on me.

4. I have certain books that are okay for my commute, others not so much. (I usually am reading multiple books at the same time). My commute involves me smashed into a tiny bus, with loud Spanish radio blaring in my ears. Strangely, I find that reading something difficult really works for me on the commute, something engaging and perhaps way out of the realm of my own life. Like the book I read about what’s going on in Darfur. Perfect commute book. But I find that short stories or contemporary fiction is harder to get into in that environment, so it’s usually rigorous non-fiction for the commute.

5. I write in pretty much every book I read. I underline passages (how do you think I can pull up quotes so easily for the blog? Because I’ve marked it for safe keeping!), keep lists of vocabulary in the back blank pages, leave exclamation points or asterisks in the margins next to passages I particularly love. It’s compulsive – I don’t feel right if I’m reading without also having a pen in my hand.

6. If the book has the following words in the title, or if it even just clear that the book is ABOUT these things, I will buy it sight unseen. My shelves are lined with books I haven’t read yet which involve the following topics:
— ancient silk road
— Iran / Persia
— the Caucasus
— Balkans
— Ireland
— Mongolia
— speculative stock market bubble
— cults (Jonestown, Manson, Co$, The Family)
— Alexander Hamilton

I also will buy any book written by the following people:
— Margaret Atwood
— John Irving
— Michael Chabon
— Lorrie Moore
— Robert Kaplan
— Jeanette Winterson
— Madeleine L’Engle (well, THAT’S done … boo hoo – but for YEARS before she died it was the case)
— A.S. Byatt
— Cormac McCarthy
— Elinor Lipman

7. I like to read out loud to myself. I find it relaxing. But not just anything. Here are the things I always gravitate to when I feel like reading out loud for an hour or so:
— Nicholas Mosley’s Hopeful Monsters (excerpt here)
— Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion (excerpt here)
— Nancy Lehman’s Lives of the Saints (excerpt here)
— Susan Daitch’s The Colorist (excerpt here)
— Madeleine L’Engle’s Ring of Endless Light (excerpt here)
— Joy Williams’s State of Grace (excerpt here)
— Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man (excerpt here)
— Norman Rush’s Mating (excerpt here)
These books feel good to read out loud. I also read Shakespeare’s sonnets out loud, which almost becomes an act of meditation.

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54 Responses to 7 Weird Reading Facts

  1. ricki says:

    I agree on the Modern Library typeface. It is very readable. (And they use a heavier paper, which is important too).

    Another little fact: my heart beats a little faster when I see “Penguin orange.” I have a whole bunch of the Penguin paperbacks (despite the ugly typeface), and I like seeing all of them lined up on the shelf.

  2. red says:

    I love, too, having books from the same publisher lined up – the uniformity is really pleasing to me.

  3. red says:

    Oh, and let me just say this: I originally read Middlemarch from the line called Barnes & Noble classics.

    I will NEVER read one of their books again – EVER – because Middlemarch was full of typos. Sometimes a couple per page. Very very very shoddy work. I wrote a letter to the editor about it. But they’ve lost my business – at least in terms of that particular line.

  4. ricki says:

    Oh, yes, Barnes and Nobles “classics.”

    Bought a few of those when I was a broke grad student. Never again. I loathe typos and frankly think they are unforgivable in a book that is a “classic,” that has been published many times before.

    Actually, it seems to me that typo frequency is increasing in books. I do not know if it is that they don’t send things out as much for proofreading, or if it’s some fault of new technology, or what. But I have had even a few technical books (STATS books, for goodness sake) that have bad bad typos in them.

    Any editor who allows a typo to creep through in the formula for a calculation in a basic stats book should lose his or her job. (I have reviewed stats-book chapters for pay. And I worked hard to excise all the typos. Even though I was probably making less than minimum wage for doing it.)

  5. Iain says:

    I am very sensitive to typeface.
    The worst culprits for me were the French Folio editions I read when I was at college – dark, dense typefaces, which served only to make the 19th-century French texts on my reading-list even more impenetrable. Still hate those typefaces 20 years on…

    I can count on one hand the times I have been stranded without a book.
    My worst nightmare. In the age of the iPod, I always have an audiobook or a podcast to fall back on in emergencies, but it’s not even close to having a real book in my hands. As a result, I have often been the subject of much hilarity when friends and family see me lugging around not only, say, some 900-page Stephen King epic, but also a backup book, in case I finish that first book quicker than expected.

  6. red says:

    some 900-page Stephen King epic, but also a backup book, in case I finish that first book quicker than expected.

    HAHAHAHAHA I TOTALLY relate to that!!

  7. Tommy says:

    I had to look to see who published the book of Lovecraft stories I was trying to read but gave up on because the type was too rough on the eyes…it’s one thing for H.P. to write in big unbroken blocks of text….but dang…Penguin only compounded the problem….

    And, I miss the days when I carried a backpack with me whereever I went. That made carrying a book around a lot easier….

    Still, my friends laugh at trucks I’ve designated “truck books,” as they were there simply for cases where I am stuck in the truck….

  8. Ken says:

    When among people who are wont to wield chickens and goats, be very careful. Certain of the chicken wielders will also use a Cornish hen in the manner of a main-gauche. There you are, extending into the lunge with your goat after a beat-disengage against your opponent’s chicken, and then she catches your lunge with the Cornish hen, leaving you wide open for the riposte with the chicken (which by now is quite ill-tempered).

  9. red says:

    Tommy – Yeah, I find if an author writes in big long paragraphs (and George Eliot is one of them) – I need a gentle typeface, one that is more elegant. Otherwise it’s too difficult.

    I’m really happy with the Modern Library versions of all the classic books, in general.

  10. Betsy says:

    The one that gets me (about you) is that you don’t leave the book open, face down. I don’t know why but I love that I learned that detail about you.

  11. red says:

    Betsy – hahahaha It makes me SO UNCOMFORTABLE when I see that!

  12. red says:

    Ken, just reading your comment makes me want to eat the insane RUHT that takes the reason prisoner!

  13. Ken says:

    I think I already done et some myself….

  14. Kerry says:

    Love this post. I never ever read a book open, face down either. I lent a book to someone once and he broke the binding so he could lay it down flat to read it. It caused me to fly into a murderous rage.

  15. red says:

    Kerry – hahahahahahahaha

    Like – do not mess with the specific weird book lovers. DO NOT MESS WITH US!

  16. Mark says:

    This is probably sacrilegious in a discussion full of book lovers, but I’ve considered getting a Kindle so that I’m never without something to read.

  17. Erik says:

    This post is great. I love writing in the margins of my books, but I cannot fold over the corners of pages to mark my place — that feels like I’m desecrating the book, I must use a placemarker. Like Kerry, I once loaned a book to a friend who I’ll never loan a book to again — it was a book of poetry and when she gave it back to me, about 40 different pages had been folded over (marking her favorite poems) and I was in utter shock that she would think nothing of mangling my book like that!

  18. red says:

    Mark – I’ve heard great things about them, actually. I feel like I would really miss the whole page-turning aspect of book-reading – but I am curious about those things.

  19. red says:

    Erik – I totally understand. Anne Fadiman (one of my favorite essayists) wrote a whole book of essays about being a book-lover (it’s called Ex Libris) and there’s a whole essay about what TO do with books and what NOT to do. She freaks out about certain things like we do – like turning a page down as a place-holder and stuff like that – I laughed out loud in recognition at some of her examples!

  20. red says:

    Also – why I shiver with horror at turning a book down, face open – and yet do not balk at WRITING all over the pages – is just another one of those mysteries of life.

    Kind of like how some people don’t understand the concept of “exaggerating for comic effect”.

  21. red says:

    Here is something even more horrifying. I was dating someone once, and he was going on a month-long backpacking trip with someone. I leant him a book that he asked for – and when he returned, he told me that they had ripped the book in half because his travel companion hadn’t brought a book … so he gave his friend the beginning of the book and he kept the final part so he could finish it.

    Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re backpacking out in the wild … and the book wasn’t expensive or precious or anything …

    but still:

    Dude. Don’t rip my book in half, mkay?

  22. JFH says:

    You underline, and not highlight? I don’t know anyone that does that anymore, very old school.

  23. red says:

    JFH – yes! I find that highlighter pen, after some time, fades … and I don’t like what it looks like on the page.

    So strange, the quirks we have!

  24. ricki says:

    Oh, that story of the dude ripping the book in half gives me the willies. Seriously…if I were out camping (which I would not be) and my companion had no book and I didn’t have a second or third book with me (which I would not lack), I would totally be, “Dude…I’ll READ it to you, OK?”

    I can’t remember who it was – Calvin Trillin, maybe? that I read about who said he would carry paperbacks with him on trips, and rip out and throw away chapters as he read them to lighten the load. That makes me hurt inside and it made me esteem the person (and it might not have been Trillin but that kind of sticks in my head) less for it.

  25. red says:

    Ricki – yes, I kind of couldn’t get past it!

  26. jenob says:

    You know you are a true lover of books when you have quirks about them.

    I HATE when the spine has a big crease in it. I will read a book almost closed if I have to so that I don’t break the spine. So yes, that means I would NEVER lay a book face down. And if I don’t have a bookmark I will memorize the page number so that I don’t earmark a book.

    I also have serious problems writing in my books. Even in college textbooks, I struggled to write in, highlight and comment on the page! Thank god for post-it notes! However, I did usually allow myself to break those spines – writing a paper if you have to constantly reopen a book was just too much at 3am.

  27. tracey says:

    Any time I’ve ever highlighted a book, it’s bled through the page and I cannot deal. Even the screaming neon yellow ones.

    No. NO.

  28. red says:

    Tracey – yes, I can’t deal with that either! However, I CAN deal with the indent of my pen coming thru the page from the other side. I have NO idea what the difference is, but as far as I am concerned, it is huge. HUGE!

  29. Reba says:

    I was about to recommend that very same Anne Fadiman essay when I first read this thread at work…but then I got caught up in the last chapters of “Bread and Wine,” missed my bus stop, and by the time I arrived home, it was too late! The thread had moved on. So it goes.
    Personally, I brought not one but two pocket paperbacks with me when I went shopping for my last purse, just so I wouldn’t accidentally buy a bag too small for my standard book-and-a-spare. And I’m not even someone who buys many books: I have more library cards on my keychain than I do keys!

  30. red says:

    Reba – You bring up another great point that I should have included in my list: the issue with buying a purse (or bag) that is appropriate for carrying around multiple books (as well as a wallet, iPod and whatever else I have in there). The little teensy evening purses are so cute and I have some of them but I always find myself choosing a purse that is just a little bit bigger in order to accommodate the books!

    Oh, another weird thing: I do buy hardback books but I prefer to read those at home, at a table, rather than on a commute or standing in line somewhere.

    Most of my books are paperbacks, I would say.

  31. amelie says:

    sheila,

    LOVE this list of quirks. relate to many of them very well. for instance,

    totally and completely with you on underlining [[and its opposite side impressions]] over highlighting [[and bleeding]]. must. have. pen. !. i don’t know why, but i like it better. on the most basic level, i guess i find it more functional “on-the-go” to have a pen in hand for underlining AND margin notes, instead of a highlighter for one and a pen for the other..

    also, the love song of j. alfred prufrock DEMANDS that i read it out loud, every time. it knows no compromise.

  32. Elizabeth says:

    wow…i love this list, but my quirks are completely different

    when i was little (probably ages 5-12) i thought nothing of dog-earring books and leaving them face down. I’m ashamed to say I even did it with library books. Now i wouldn’t dream of doing this, but i also could NEVER write in a book…i don’t know, maybe since i’ve never tried it i don’t know what i’m missing?

    i do have to say though, that my old broken books are my most loved and the ones that i have read over and over

    my other quirk is smelling the bindings…i looooove the smell of books!

  33. Kerry says:

    Love writing in my books! Love underlining — but don’t like it messy — I underline using the bookmark as a guide, so it’s nice and neat. What can I say, I am a Virgo. And I replace the bookmark if it gets too inky. Haha.

    My mantra is “Always have reading material.” Then it doesn’t matter what you are waiting for or for how long.

    I am intrigued by the Kindle but would miss the underlining. How do you find your favorite passages again?

  34. Erik says:

    HE RIPPED THE BOOK IN HALF???!?!???!???!?? My head just exploded.

  35. ricki says:

    And on underlining/highlighting/notes:

    I will only underline or take notes in a book in pencil. It’s just one of my “things.” I feel like I can erase the pencil later if it bugs me.

    If I am buying a used book, and I open it up, and find that someone has either highlighted with one of those neon pens, or if they’ve underlined large quantities of the book, I put it back on the shelf and don’t buy it. (Seriously, I think some students believe that underlining is like “magic reading” – if you underline it, you will learn it. And they don’t follow the “10% rule” I was taught: if you are underlining more than 10% on a page, that’s too much.)

    And the same goes for books with lots and lots of marginal notes. I almost feel like instead of getting the book, I’m getting some blowhard who owned the book before me LECTURING at me about the book. (I once bought a book – on how quantum physics can inform spirituality – and the second half of the book I had to deal with increasingly agitated commentary from the d-bag previous owner, who kept writing things like “BULLSHIT” in the margins. I could not finish the book even though the topic interested me, because I literally felt as if I was trying to read with the former owner screaming at me about how the book was wrong, God did not exist, and I was wasting my time to be reading the book…)

  36. red says:

    ricki – yeah, when i buy second-hand books online, one of the prerequisites is that it is “unmarked”.

    I am fascinated by marginalia, though, just in and of itself – although I don’t like to read a book passed on with someone else’s notes in it. I would find it very interesting to take a look at the”blowhard”s” notes myself. I think it’s fascinating.

    The copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull that I own also has a couple of underlines in it from someone who owned the book before me (or 20 owners before me, who knows) … and this person was only interested in the possibility of soulmates (judging from the underlines, I mean) … Anything that had anything to do with finding a mate was marked. I felt a kinship with that long ago person.

    Oh, and my copy of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – an enormous multi-volume book – has a couple of pencilled in notes in it – ONLY in the famous chapter on Christianity. The person in question went NUTS on that chapter, underlining, whatever – and you can feel the poor person quivering with outrage at this book that was written centuries ago (the underliner, judging from what he/she chose to mark – seems to be an enraged Christian nitwit, all “outraged” and puff-puffing over how insulted they were at the chapter) – but Jesus Christ, it’s a huge book – thousands of pages – did you read the rest of it, underliner? Or did you just pick it up to read the one part that would get your knickers in a twist?

    I bought it at a second-hand store – and it’s hardcover – a beautiful book, really – and I didn’t even notice the one chapter of markings – I definitely wouldnt have bought it if it had markings all the way thru.

  37. red says:

    Erik – hahahahahahaha

  38. red says:

    (Oh, and about underlining: I have pretty much rendered my own book collection as unsellable … because of my own underlinings – unless I become hugely famous and then they can be picked over for clues to my personality in the marginalia. But NOBODY would buy these books they’re all so marked up.)

    Maybe I’m just like a dog, pissing on my territory or something.

  39. red says:

    Elizabeth – a little battering is not at all a bad thing – then you know which book is really loved! My copy of Possession is basically TAPED together – I refuse to buy a new copy because that copy, with all its creases and bends is precious to me. Now that is a loved book. Same with Harriet the Spy which basically now looks like an ancient papyrus tablet it is so used!!

  40. red says:

    Kerry – I think when John Quincy Adams went to college, John Adams wrote him a letter of advice and one line of it was, “You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”

    True!!

  41. Kerry says:

    Oh, I love that quote.

    And I vote for you being HUGELY famous so we can pore over all of your marginalia.

    That sounds dirty, somehow, doesn’t it?

  42. jenob says:

    While it is not something I can bring myself to do, there are times that I wish I wasn’t so weird about my books.

    A friend of mine had heard something similar to the backpacker story and decided he wanted to see what that was like. He bought a cheap paperback version of a book he had been curious about and as he finished a page, he ripped it out and threw it away. He said it was strangely liberating, but doesn’t plan on doing it again.

    I am totally fascinated by the IDEA of doing that, but I know I never will actually do it.

    (Kerry – one guess who it was)

  43. Elizabeth says:

    On the subject of ripping or otherwise destroying books:
    I have picked up a few free books that the school library was giving away (old, outdated reference books and such) with the intention of refilling them with blank pages and making them into a journal. I still have yet to do this though, because the thought of cutting out the pages is too much!

    So question…if it’s a book with outdated info (not even an old encyclopedia or anything with pictures) should I keep it whole, just for the principle of the thing?

  44. red says:

    Elizabeth – I think that’s a cool idea to make it a journal if it’s not a book you really love or whatever!

    I will admit to ripping out just one short story or essay from a collection if the rest stunk and I don’t want to keep the book around. I have a Harold Brodkey story that is one of my favorites of all time but it was in a huge compilation of other stories by other authors that I didn’t care for – so yes, I ripped it out – still have it!

  45. Desirae says:

    I’ve never commented on this blog before but this is a topic I just couldn’t pass up. It’s really refreshing to see that I’m not the only one that is a giant nutcase about books! I don’t mind laying a book face down and open (but I would never crack the spine deliberately) but the idea of dog-earing a page freezes me to the very marrow. I don’t write in books either, unless they’re books I’m going to sell like a textbook or something. When I want a certain passage I just have to flip through until I find it – I also never use bookmarks, I remember either the page number or the last thing I read. I think most of my weird and tics and twitches about treatment of books come from my mother. I’m pretty sure if she saw me abusing a book cartoon steam would actually come out of her ears. And I love, love, love a well made book with a beautifully designed cover. I’ll admit I have doubles of some books because I saw a cover I just couldn’t pass up. That’s actually the one thing I like about that abhorrent Twilight series – the first book at least had a cover that was quite pretty. One day I came home to find my sister using a softcover encyclopedia of mythology I have as a backing for a list she was writing…and the impression of the pen was left behind on the cover. I was all WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU CAN NEVER TOUCH MY BOOKS AGAIN OMG. Haha, this is why my family secretly hates me. Wow, this turned into kind of an essay.

  46. red says:

    the idea of dog-earing a page freezes me to the very marrow

    God, just the way you put that made me smile ear to ear. It’s so crazy and I TOTALLY relate to it!!! I have been loving to read everyone’s different quirks too.

    I rarely use bookmarks myself – I’m like you, I can usually remember exactly where I left off.

  47. Mary says:

    Sheila,

    Do you think part of the reason you didn’t care too much for Norman Rush’s Mortals is that the main character ripped pages out of books and discarded them as he read through them? I don’t know why that detail sticks with me. But it made me cringe.

  48. melissa says:

    Just a quick drive-by comment – I also have rules of reading… I have to also have a book with me at all times, but that’s why I have ebooks on my iPhone. (and, had them on my Palm Pilot before that). Can’t be without a book.

    I am a spine-breaker, and a face-down-book leaver. But I also have a list of authors I buy sight unseen, and topics that I love.

    And, some of my books are like old friends that I drop into and out of when I need comfort.

  49. Mark says:

    Oh, I just remembered my copy of The Two Towers. 95% of the front cover is torn off and all the corners have puppy teeth marks on them. I was so pissed at the time, but it’s now a decade after that dog died of old age and I wouldn’t give up that book for anything.

  50. Lizzy E says:

    De-lurker here- one thing I LOVE to do is buy old library copies of books. As in, I specifically look for “used library book, good condition” on Amazon. (Hence, my copy of The Keeping Days is virtually identical to the school library version that I first picked up, including the gorgeous cover… which makes me so. happy.) (I’m a total cover geek.) (There is only one acceptable Witch of Blackbird Pond cover, IMO. any other is utter heresy, not to mention relatively ugly.)
    I also love my copies of books I’ve had for years. A Ring of Endless Light is practically falling apart (I’ve only recently begun to see the light about the horrors of face-downing- too late for the old paperbacks, alas) and Cheaper by the Dozen has interestingly wavy pages after being left out, overnight, on a car hood… and being snowed on and half soaked!
    Oh- and other Elizabeth- at my high school, at the beginning of the year all of the art people bought an old book and filled it with random doodles and little paintings, and when they exhibited at the end of the year, the (un-arted-on) pages were written on by their exhibit visitors. (That probably sounds really confusing, but it was awesome.)
    And Modern Library rocks- I love reading their Jane Austens. The clarity of the font matches the clarity of her words. /end longwindedness

  51. Light & Dark says:

    So I’m not a freak? Or least only as much of a freak as the rest of ya?!

    I wont’ even try to relate the quirks in my love of books (the physical objects as well as their contents) but Sheila, your comments about marginalia have unfortunately reminded me of the greatest book-related travesty I ever committed.

    Studying English at university and blessed to get into the Shakespeare class of the top Shakespeare prof – a true lover of the Bard who could also communicate with insight some different perspectives on the works. Because it was a once-per-week evening 3 hour class, we covered a full play each class. (Which was why I found it so rewarding – no breaking up the concepts.)

    Recommended text was the Riverside Shakespeare – a beautiful piece of bookmaking, but over $100 even then. Too broke to afford it, I ended up borrowing my roommate’s no-name paperback Shakespeare anthology.

    Discussion in class was so intense and fascinating, it was all I could do to jot notes in the margins about all the things I was seeing in the plays for the first time.

    Finished my papers, wrote the final, then had to GIVE THE BOOK BACK TO ITS OWNER. I still mourn the loss of those insights, inspirations and questions scribbled in the margins in my sloppy script.

    To this day, I’ve never been able to bring myself to purchase a copy of the Riverside.

    (Wishing you strength for the challenges you’re going through…)

    Paul

  52. Kerry says:

    Mark’s comment about the puppy teeth-marks just made me say “Awwwwwww. . .” out loud, and Hope sat up and looked at me, wondering what was going on.

  53. Lizzy E says:

    Also, I just remembered- red, have you read “The Joys of Love” by Madeleine L’Engle? It was published just this year, posthumously- she wrote it in (I think) the 40’s- and it’s quite good. It feels like an earlier work, the depths of Wrinkle or Endless Light or Severed Wasp aren’t all there- but it’s fascinating, reading it and seeing glimpses of what’s yet to come.
    I also loved how it was about theater! Her insights into acting were marvelous to read. I just love how she writes- the combination of very real, practical concerns and luminous language. (And her characters- Jane the roommate was my favorite in this one!)

  54. mejack says:

    I have a kindle. It was a gift that I did not ask for. I have read a few things on it, yet I still feel like I have not fully read the book without having a copy of it (I don’t read library books. I know, I know) It also does not have page numbers. NO PAGE NUMBERS. Nor does it tell you how many pages there are, how many read or how many to go. There is just a little meter on the bottom that fills up like a telethon fundraiser. I like it, though. You can decide you want to read something and have a copy in your kindle in less than a minute. It’s also good for someone like me who has paid ridiculous overweight fees in airports because of my books weighing down my luggage. Good and bad. All in all, thumbs up.

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