How many times has someone pressed a book on you 'that you'll love' which you actually loathe?
Bibliophiles, by definition, love books. We love to read them and reread them, to discuss and ponder them, to keep them on our shelves. Some even love to share them ... though others, like me, jealously protect the integrity of their collection like a citadel guard getting paid by the corpse.
But the at very least we all – even we hoarders – love to suggest and recommend books to others. Especially if we've just come across something previously unknown but spectacularly good, or something very obscure, but also spectacularly good, that we feel should be appreciated by more people. (I've spent the last 15 years trying to convince the world that Bruce Wagner's graphic novel Wild Palms is a work of genius. It is, I swear to God.)
It's lovely, how this enthusiasm for books and writing draws us together like molecules in liquid, gathering and binding us. We willingly become entangled in a sort of literary waltz, a pleasant to-and-fro of fresh discovery.
But what about when someone presses a book on you, assuring you that you'll simply adore it ... and you don't? Worse – you hate the thing, and can't understand how anyone would think of it and then think of you.
Here's a prime example. I hold in my hand a piece of paper – several pieces of paper, actually, and a stiff cardboard cover. It's a paperback of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, the one with a cover of lava-red and a bleary photo of what looks like two people standing at a window. I've had it since 1994, when I was given it by a girl with whom I sort of had a bit of a thing going on. Inside is her personalised message: "From the mild-green hairy-lipped squid" (a silly in-joke that's actually funnier than it sounds). She bought it for me because it was, at the time, one of her favourites, and she was sure it would become one of mine.
And I haven't read it. I've had that book in my possession for 16 years and not read it, because I didn't like it. I gave it a go more than once, reached page 50 or whatever, and closed it again. Still don't like it. Still find it a bit undergraduate, in theme and style. Still think Tomas is – for want of a more elegant phraseology – a lousy prick who deserves a punch in the head.
All of this raises a number of rather disquieting existential questions. Does this mean, when a fellow book lover gives you a book you hate, the person didn't really know you, or had an erroneous idea of you in their mind? Does it mean you don't really know yourself? Does it mean the self is fundamentally unknowable, at least through the contents of a bookshelf?
Most importantly, does it mean you'll have to avoid the giver from now until the day one of you dies, just to be spared that excruciatingly awkward moment where they excitedly ask how you liked the book, and you lie unconvincingly to spare their feelings?
The Milan Kundera thing is exacerbated by the fact that this girl was but the latest person to tell me I would love the book, would really relate to it, was so like the main character (say it ain't so…). Throughout college every person I met who had read Unbearable Lightness of Being urged me to read it, too. It was made for me. We were made for each other. This book would make sense on a profound, almost spiritual level. It would even, I was assured more than once, change my life. It did, I suppose. It made me realise the mild-green hairy-lipped squid and I were doomed.
There have been other ill-starred recommendations. The most disturbing in recent years came about six months ago, when one of my oldest friends exhorted me to read Russell Brand's memoir. She not only promised me I'd love the book but insisted that Brand frequently reminded her of me, particularly our younger selves. Christ. Hopefully she meant the charming, funny, literate aspects, not the childish, tiresome braggadocio about his sexual conquests.
Unsuitable book suggestions: guaranteed to inculcate existential confusion and personality disintegration in even the most well-ordered mind. And mine wasn't too well-ordered to begin with.
From: Guardian
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