How to choose a novel in a bookshop

Despite the adage, books are often judged by their covers at bookshops. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

So many books, so few resources. How do you decide which ones to devote your attention to? One of the features of a printed book is that its packaging contains elements of promotion, so to speak. There’s a lot you can learn even before you skim some passages in a bookshop.

Take the format and size, to begin with. A hardback signifies quality, a sign that the publisher feels it is worth the time you spend on it. The thickness is another signal of its importance, with the assumption that the more the pages, the weightier the substance. Not necessarily true.

Despite the adage, books are also judged by their covers. A garish, pulpy design indicates contents that match. Muted colours and sober typefaces suggest award-winning potential. There are tiresome clichés aplenty. For example, as Elliot Ross writes, “the covers of most novels ‘about Africa’ seem to have been designed by someone whose principal idea of the continent comes from The Lion King.” The Indian equivalent would be sarees, spices and mangoes.

Then, there’s the title itself. This can tell you whom the novel is about (David Copperfield, Moll Flanders), where it is set (A Passage to India, The Russia House), or indicate the theme (Disgrace, Shame). Many titles are borrowed from Shakespeare, which can make you feel well-read if you spot the reference (The Fault in Our Stars, Brave New World).

The jacket copy, of course, is meant to give you an idea of the book’s essence, though it can veer into the breathlessly adjectival. Publishing copywriter Louise Willder acknowledges that there’s an element of “wonderful imaginative lying” at its core. It’s the same with blurbs, of which much has already been written. Suffice to say that the garden variety blurb can be banal and repetitive.

Some blurbs, though, have gone down in literary history. Take the cover of a self-published 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass, on which Walt Whitman included a phrase from a letter by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I greet you at the start of a great career.” Those words proved to be prophetic.

On the other hand, review quotes can turn out to be, well, less than honest. The back cover of a recent non-fiction paperback by Jordan Peterson contained, among others, these words from a review in The Times: “A philosophy of the meaning of life…the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has ever written.” The actual review, however, described Peterson's prose as “repetitious, unvariegated, rhythmless, and opaque”. Only in a passage that praised a specific chapter did the reviewer use the words that were quoted. Sneaky.

The cues continue after opening the book. In some reprints, authors or admirers add prefaces looking back on the work. Henry James’s prefaces for his novels are significant critical essays. Graham Greene also provided introductions for his collected works, reminiscing about the circumstances in which the novels were written.

After that, dedications can display the writer’s mindset. Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories has an acrostic addressed to his son: “Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu: / All our dream-worlds may come true. / Fairy lands are fearsome too. / As I wander far from view / Read, and bring me home to you.” And the much-quoted dedication in P.G. Wodehouse’s The Heart of a Goof reads: “To my daughter Leonora, without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.” Inimitable.

Yet another layer may await before you delve into the novel's opening lines. This is the epigraph, a brief excerpt from another work that can guide you into the heart of the book’s subject like a compass pointing the way forward.

Notably, Harper Lee’s epigraph for To Kill A Mockingbird was taken from an essay by Charles Lamb: “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.” Also apt is Jhumpa Lahiri’s epigraph for The Namesake, which is a sentence from an English translation of Gogol’s The Overcoat: “The reader should realize himself that it could not have happened otherwise, and that to give him any other name was quite out of the question.” Agreed.

Alas, even after following all these breadcrumbs, the book may not turn out to be the treasure you were expecting. If that happens, remember the sunk cost fallacy, stop reading, and find something else. Life’s too short for unenjoyable books.