I had an interaction with a customer the other day (I'm a bookseller) that reminded me of Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise by Katherine Rundell. I had a few problems with that book that I put in my review, but there was a particular section that was brought to mind by this customer's comments and I thought was general enough to be included in the Club Forum instead of that book's forum. I was making a display of Super Readable books today (Hi-Lo books) that made me think of it all again.

The customer was asking if we had any books written for over a 12th grade reading level, and said that she'd heard many of the most popular books even for adults are written at a 6th-8th grade level so she was looking for something more "appropriate" for her literate mind. (Note that this customer did not in fact end up buying a single book).

This made me think of how children's books, sometimes including YA, are often disregarded as not "challenging enough" or "smart enough" for older readers. There seems to be a catch 22 as it were of stigmatizing accessible literature among the overall decline of literacy. The average person does struggle with reading period, with literary complexity, vocabulary/spelling, understanding concepts and themes, and extrapolating your own conclusion based on presented information. And I think the stigma of children's literature filters down from what's a "real" book, eg the "classics," and ends up affecting many different subsets like the romance genre, graphic novels, and women writers, but children's books often end up suffering the most imo. There's this idea that we should only be reading "real" books, whatever those are.

This also leads into a very alienating concept of reading as work instead of as enjoyment. That we should only be reading to challenge and improve ourselves instead of as a hobby or entertainment. I think this mindset also ignores that most reading, including reading for fun, tends to improve or maintain literacy more than not reading at all, and that many books meant for entertainment can still challenge us and teach us things. I personally use reading for both learning and entertainment, but for people who aren't already readers, who are trying to get back into reading, or who struggle to read, framing reading only as a form of mental exercise is just going to push even more people away, especially in this era of overwork and political survival. And in our current literacy crisis (at least in the US), that's the last thing we need.

Anyway, when this customer asked for books above 12th grade reading level, I tried to explain that 12th graders are often 17-19 so that's already an adult, and that most students in that grade are usually reading pretty complex classics like Shakespeare or Faulkner or Austen, and to get something more complex in writing you'd probably need to look at something academic. She wasn't looking for more complex maturity ie adult books over YA books. It was just such an odd and kind of off base question that brought up a lot of thoughts. I don't really have a question or anything, just musings and am curious to see what other people think about all of this.

Edit that from reading the comments, I think a lot of people are interpreting this post as "people shouldn't read challenging literature" or "challenging literature can't also be fun" and that was not my meaning at all! The catch 22 I'm trying to describe about accessibility during an overall decline in literacy and ability to read complex literature is that it can be an incredibly complex situation to both provide and de-stigmatize literature that is accessible and a "gateway to reading" for those who cannot (yet) or will not read at a complex level, but also that we must still somehow raise literacy so that people can read those challenging books if they so choose (and to also de-stigmatize challenging books). I think there's been some good discussion on these points!

Also, I am a firm believer that challenging books can be fun! I am not putting fun and challenging books in mutually exclusive categories, just trying to put thoughts into words around the idea that certain books or genres are inherently better than others or that certain mindsets around reading are better than others, and how this customer's attitude of "only things at this reading level are worthy of my time" can be damaging and dismissive and elitist. For context on the Rundell book I mentioned (which I only now realize I never included, whoops), the section I was referring to is one where she discusses "a sense among most adults that we should only read in one direction, because to do otherwise would be to regress or retreat: to de-mature," and that were we to continue in that singularly linear fashion, "turning always to books of obvious increasing complexity, you’d be left ultimately with nothing but Finnegans Wake and the complete works of the French deconstructionist theorist Jacques Derrida to cheer your deathbed." (quoted from Rundell's book). I didn't have any deep analysis of that section for this post, only that the request for complex literature, and manner in which it was made, brought it to mind.

Ever feel you set yourself up for success or failure of expectations before you've even started reading the book? Like you've decided that's my kinda thing and your brain just.... decides to agree?

I love checking out star ratings before I read a book, and sometimes I'll even take a cheeky sneak peak at reviews while desperately trying to avoid spoilers (doesn't always work!). Sometimes this is valuable, as it shows me if a novel is going to be worth my time, and highly rated books sometimes do end up being a 5 star read!

But sometimes, especially with books that float towards the 3 star for a lot of folks, I wonder if I would've enjoyed the book more if I'd just gone in completely blind to public opinion.

I read Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh recently and ate up every word. From the description it was exactly my kind of novel, and I loved it. But looking at it objectively? I know it's maybe not the best example of the genre, but I'd gone in thinking - even "knowing" - that I'd love it.

On the flip side, I read How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu after seeing a couple of reviews thay shared a more negative point of view, and I realised very quickly while reading that yes I agreed with those reviews, and I wasn't having a good time.

What are your thoughts? Do we let public perception interrupt and influence our enjoyment without even really meaning to? Do you fully avoid opinions of books before reading them because of this?

I am very skeptical going into this after reading this authors note and seeing a cast of characters list. The cast of characters is a big nitpick of mine because makes it seem as if the book has a complex set of characters that the author doesn’t know how to manage. The note basically was giving “I wrote these animal characters to get away with either bad writing or controversial topics that I can later say is irrelevant because they’re animals.” Not to mention that author’s note was really snarky, and it makes me feel weird about this. Idk I want that badge so here we go 😅

i am reading beartown by fredrik backman, and i went to the forum to see people’s thoughts so far and ive come across dozens of posts that basically say the same thing.. it makes me wonder, do people not check what has already been said in the forum before making a post? i almost always check to see if someone has made the same observation i have or to engage with others, but it seems like many people just post without checking and it leaves the forum cluttered with many posts reiterating the same point, when it could be condensed into a few posts with more comments. let me know what you think!!

1 more chapter before I DNF

First off, apologies for the dissertation-style title (and the length of this post). While effective in expressing my ire, I didn't think rage-induced, keyboard smashing would be helpful for anyone who comes across this trying to figure out what I'm talking about. Anyway, I wanted to come here and sort of rant but also explain because I feel like if anyone would care about this news, it would be you lovely people.

You may have recently seen news about a study commissioned by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The item in question, “An Empirical Study of the Impact of Library E-Lending on the Book Economy”, is a 72-page report which claims that libraries are undermining the commercial marketplace through eBook licensing agreements, reducing the already dwindling profits for authors and destabilizing the publishing industry. I've linked the study above if you want to read it for yourself. Personally, I don't want to send the report anymore traffic, but I understand that people may want to do their own due diligence, so I've left it up to y'all. However, if you don't mind spoilers, I'm here to tell you the ending: it's all bullshit.

First, the report was conducted by Secretariat Advisors, who present themselves as a "global independent expert services and litigation consulting firm that specializes in expert witness testimony, economic damages, forensic accounting, and dispute resolution." Now, yes, having an independent third-party conduct any such research is an important part of maintaining objectivity. However, given their reported credentials (i.e., economic damages), it seems to me that the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers went into this with a particular mindset - one that I would argue screams "we're experiencing financial losses and we want someone to blame."

Second, for having a team of PhD level economists attached to this report, they sure don't understand how to read data. I want to preface this by saying I am not an economist. I'm also not a statistician. But I did spend nearly 10 years conducting qualitative research in a professional setting, including data modeling and interpretation. And using this knowledge to read the report, I found that it misinterprets data in order back up their claim that “decreases in library e-book prices or certain other changes to licensing terms, as required in recent state legislative initiatives" have harmed the market. For instance, the report compares library eBook collections and print sales, stating that while print sales have stayed steady, library eBook collections have increased. They chart this in the figure below.

As others online have pointed out, the authors don't establish how large the library market is, so there's no way to know if these two metrics are correlated other than "books." The chart also tracks e-book collection size (aka how many copies libraries hold) but not circulation (how many times people are checking them out). Thus a library could potentially grow its digital collection (i.e., buy more digital books) without seeing any increase in use. So even setting aside the missing correlation with print sales, the chart doesn't show borrowing behavior at all. If in stead, they had compared commercial digital book sales with library digital loans, or the relative amount of money spent in each category, they might find a dip if people were choosing to borrowing from library collections rather than purchasing them independently.

Instead, they present a line of reasoning which explores what would have happened if a past event or circumstance had been different: “The key policy question is not whether or not we continued to sell basically the same amount of books while library ebook collections, which make up an unknown amount of the market, increased, but rather how much money we COULD have made if libraries simply had not purchased these titles!” In other words, "Imagine how much more money we could have made if libraries didn't have eBooks! It's all their fault!"

Using this "logic" (I feel like even with the quotes I'm being generous) alongside other shaky claims, the authors then argue against placing government controls on the distribution, purchase, and pricing of e-books and audiobooks in library channels, as these controls would reduce the amount libraries have to pay to license such materials and allow them to increase their collection size with their current (already dismal) budgets. Instead, they suggest the governments should provide more funding to libraries so they can pay current prices (or more as the costs increase with inflation and changing market value).

Third, there is another fundamental flaw with the logic of this report, which is concerning given how many times the authors use the word "expert" on their website: Publishing and books are not a zero-sum market.

What is a zero-sum market, you ask? A zero-sum, or subtractive market, is one in which consuming a good decreases or eliminates demand for related goods; additionally that consumption may remove it from the market. For instance, if you buy a house from one realtor, another realtor loses out. It's a win-lose situation. But books are a non-zero-sum, or additive, market: one person buying or reading a book does not diminish the opportunities for others, nor does a reader's consumption of one book reduce their desire to buy more. We all know this to be true. It doesn't matter how many books we read or buy, we're always going to want more.

All this being said, suggesting that libraries are negatively impacting book sales is not only ridiculous, in my opinion, it's malicious. This report isn't trying to protect authors or editors or any of the folks who play a role in the creation of a book. It's misinformation and lobbying, paid for and designed to oppose potential legislation. Because if publishers were really interested in understanding the impact of the digital library market on retail sales, they would work more closely with libraries and vendors to conduct a meaningful, truly independent study that could positively inform the future for libraries, authors, and publishers. Instead, they've turned libraries into a scapegoat for their corporate greed.

I have never heard anyone pronounce the word "garage" in one syllable like this and I hope I never have to hear it again