My novel reading “rules”

But remember, rules are meant to be broken, so you do you!

Photo by freestocks

1. Do not, and I repeat: DO NOT ever read the forward first. At best, it will give you a lukewarm introduction to characters that are waiting, living, breathing, pulsing, alive, just a few pages ahead, and at worst it will spoil the plot. Just don’t do it! Plus, I have almost never read a foreword or introduction without thinking “Boring!!!” They are usually much more interesting to read once you’ve read the book and have opinions of your own to push and pull against those of the forward author.

2. When a writer sits down to write a novel, rarely are they thinking first of what will appear on the inside jacket cover or who they’ll ask for blurbs. The novel comes first. Editing and marketing come later. If you want to meet the novel as the writer wrote it, dive into it headlong without reading any reviews, synopsis, or blurbs. Imagine walking into a coffee shop to meet the novel. Don’t let any preconceived notions cloud the novel sitting before you. Go into it as you, meet the novel on its own terms, and see if sparks fly organically.

3. If you come across a detail that confuses you, don’t get hung up on it unless you want to. Things usually sort themselves out as you keep reading. For example, I was just reading Howards End and all of a sudden I was reading dialogue by a character with the name Mrs. Munt and I was shocked. I had no idea when she dropped into the scene. I could go back and figure out when she got there, who she was, and why she was there, or I could keep going and trust the book to reorient my relationship with Mrs. Munt¹ at some point. We often think we must do the former, but really both paths are valid options. I was always trying to teach my high school students this. They would get so frustrated early on in a novel when they didn’t immediately “get it.” Just keep going, I said. Eventually, it will click. And if it doesn’t, then it’s time to set the book down, but give it a good thirty pages before you rule it out. Which brings me to my next rule.

4. Trust the novel. If it is the right time for you to be reading the novel (sometimes we pick something up too early or at an in opportune time in our life and it’s best to let the book decant on the shelf a bit. Or rather—we should decant while the book waits patiently for us…)² , trust that the novel will teach you how to read it. When you begin reading a novel, you enter a sort of contract with the author. The author trusts that you’ll give the voices in the novel a chance to make themselves clear, and you trust that the author will give you the information you need at the exact time you need it in order for those voices to reveal themselves clearly to you.

5. Unless you’re into this kind of thing, which, if you are, knock yourself out, forget about looking for “symbols.” I can tell you right now that most writers don’t wade into the world of a novel thinking, “You know what this scene needs? A symbol. Let’s make these red curtains symbolize a womb (Jane Eyre). Or, man, these ducks in this duck pond really need to mean something. Like mean something mean something. Symbol for lost innocence coming right up (The Catcher in the Rye).” [Side note on Catcher: I remember reading this book in my sophomore English class and feeling so frustrated and disappointed about that duck pond scene and our discussion of it. To me, the ducks having flown away lent the scene a feeling of profound melancholy, and that particular feeling that comes so often with youth on the cusp of adulthood where you know you are feeling something big, something profound, something intangible, and you don’t know how to begin to put it into words. To me, the scene felt chill and damp and like the color gray, and poor Holden’s red hat a beacon—of what, hope? Innocence? Youth? Perhaps more?—in the midst of it. But instead of feeling like I could attempt to work through all of these thoughts and see if anyone else felt the same, the teacher and the class chalked the ducks up to “symbolizing a loss of innocence.” Is that correct? Technically, yes. Is that what I was getting at with my emotional and color-oriented language? Also, yes. But so much of the beautiful confusion that is responding to a piece of art is lost in such a straightforward labeling. I left the class feeling as though I hadn’t “gotten” the book. I didn’t get the ducks. I knew I was smart, but that was over my head, I guess. For someone less voracious and conceited than me in high school, that might have been the end of their relationship with reading. Thinking of that makes me hate symbols even more. You don’t need to recognize symbols to enjoy and deeply understand a work. I guess this is why I went for the MFA instead of the MA/Ph.D. route. My lack of patience for symbols. And theory! Another Avenue I just don’t “get.” I had to take a literary theory course in college and, while I enjoyed listening to other students’ interpretations of texts when they applied theory, I felt like I had somehow lost my way from living in a world like Elden Ring and tumbled into a land like Minecraft, so flat and blocky at the same time that it gave me a headache. But some people love Minecraft! People build incredible things in there! People love theory and write gorgeous criticism that illuminates art for others, and there is nothing wrong with that!! It just doesn’t click for me. It never has and I don’t want to say it never will because you never know, but it probably never will because I don’t make myself live in a world where symbolism or theory distract me from what I love about books: characters, story, an unexpected turn of phrase. I say all of this, but then I know I could go and write a book about my favorite uses of the em dash, which would be a snore and a half to so many readers out there.] What I’m trying to say is: This journey is yours. Don’t worry about what you do and don’t “get.” Notice what you notice. Let all of the coulds and shoulds fall away.

6. My dear, dear thesis advisor, professor, and friend, Richard Dillard, dropped this absolute gem of wisdom in our novel class one day, and I share it now with you: We may all read the same words on the same pages within the same covers, but we will all read a different book.

7. A book we read at one point in our life will not be the same even if we read it again the very next day. Every day we are alive, we evolve. The person we bring to the page and the words that wait on the page join together in a magical alchemy.

8. If you find joy in writing book reviews, in tracking your reading, or in posting about it online, you should absolutely do so. If you don’t, you shouldn’t. Earlier this year, I was plugging along, updating my Goodreads challenge, deciding if I should award stars to books or not, and, if so, how many stars I should give, and then I felt a sudden existential ennui with it all. So I stopped. I turned inward. I stopped posting about or telling people what I was reading unless I really wanted to. I let reading be a completely solitary and selfish act. Reading time was time for me and the book in front of me and the relationship we were building between us one page at a time. Reading started to feel sacred again.

9. We read for many reasons, but the holiest of all reasons, I believe, is to be entertained. But! One might say…What about textbooks? What about self-help books? What about tractor manuals or religious texts? Of course, of course, of course, and of course. But also. We’ve all heard that children learn things exponentially faster when they’re taught through play. I ask: which do remember more of, the rules set out in Romans? Or the lessons Jesus taught through parables? When we engage with story and with the author on the page, we take those thoughts deeper into ourselves. Humans are wired to tell and listen to stories. We’ve been sitting around fires, talking, for ages and ages. We love to be entertained. So let yourself be entertained. Have fun.

10. Return to the books that comfort you or challenge you or that you still think about five, ten, fifteen years later. Rereading is reading.³

11. Always bring a book with you. Paperback, hardcover, audiobook, Kindle, someone’s serialized romance on their website read from your phone—all forms of reading count as reading.

There are probably oodles more “rules” I could think of, but here is a good place to start. Do you have your own rules for reading? I’d love to hear about them.

Thanks for reading! As always, I sign off to you:

With love from my kitchen table,

Kaia

1. I discovered about two pages later that Mrs. Munt and Aunt Juley are one and the same. See? The book made it clear to me afterall!

2. To return to Howards End…The last and only time I read this book was as a senior in high school. Reading it now, the only thing that struck a chord of remembrance in me was the umbrella, and even that I am unsure of––am I actually thinking of the handbag in The Importance of Being Earnest? (Another text I read in high school and did not understand.) Now, in reading Howards End, I’m quite surprised to discover it’s quite funny. In high school, it was so convoluted and slow-moving to me that I had no idea a book like it could be even remotely funny. All of this is to say: Sometimes we are ready to read a book when we pick it up, and sometimes we are not.

3. Unrelated but related: Listening to audiobooks absolutely, one hundred percent counts as reading. Anyone who tells you otherwise is being ableist and blockheaded and, frankly, is missing out on a lovely medium.