Who wants to be matched on book preferences? Not me. I read travel journals about fern societies. (Great book, by the way.)
More to the point, book preferences seem too intellectual/random to say very much about a person.
But then I realized something. While it’s true that which books in particular you prefer probably doesn’t carry a lot of predictive capacity, the tone of the books probably does.
This is grossly oversimplified, but here are what I perceive to be the main categories of “tone”:
“Life in all its ordinariness is Important, and deadly serious.” If you have read anything by DFW, then you know this tone. DFW took life deadly seriously, but the ordinary parts, the “real” parts. He added humor, presumably to relieve tension, but I get the feeling reading his stuff that the overall tone is very, very serious. If this is the only type of stuff you read, then I imagine you are pretty uptight.
“Hey, look, there are certain subsets of Life that are deadly serious and Important; everything else you can ignore.” I feel like this category occupies 74% of the volume of non-fiction library shelves. Choose your favorite category: Communication is important; Relationships are important; Global warming is important; Economics is important; etc. etc. If this is the only type of stuff you read, then I’ll probably want to ask you about what you find important and why, and then respectfully leave you alone.
“I’m not going to make any value judgments about what’s “important”; I’m just consuming what interests me, OKAY??” This is closely related to the previous category. Like that category, this is usually topical stuff, but the difference is that this stuff carries no tone of importance.
“Life, what? I thought we were just in theory-land.” This is a lot of what you find on university bookshelves. It’s the type of stuff that feeds academic minds. If this is all you read, then I’ll probably want to ask you about your mental models and what they do for you, and then respectfully leave you alone.
“Why bother with Reality when I can escape to the supernaturally fantastic?” I perceive this to be a large portion of the fiction collection (although I don’t read much fiction so I can’t say that with much confidence). It’d be fair to say that I don’t understand these people.
“Hehe, isn’t Life amusing and cute?” These books seem to be pretty uncommon. At least at my library, the Humor & Wit section is about 2.5 shelves on one bookcase, and included in the Humor & Wit section is DFW and Jonathan Franzen, so it’s certainly not all light-hearted stuff. If this is all you read, then I will probably find you frustrating. If you don’t read this at all, then I will probably find you frustrating.
“Hey, look, there are certain subsets of Life that are deadly serious and Important; everything else you can ignore.” I feel like this category occupies 74% of the volume of non-fiction library shelves. Choose your favorite category: Communication is important; Relationships are important; Global warming is important; Economics is important; etc. etc. If this is the only type of stuff you read, then I’ll probably want to ask you about what you find important and why, and then respectfully leave you alone.
“I’m not going to make any value judgments about what’s “important”; I’m just consuming what interests me, OKAY??” This is closely related to the previous category. Like that category, this is usually topical stuff, but the difference is that this stuff carries no tone of importance.
“Life, what? I thought we were just in theory-land.” This is a lot of what you find on university bookshelves. It’s the type of stuff that feeds academic minds. If this is all you read, then I’ll probably want to ask you about your mental models and what they do for you, and then respectfully leave you alone.
“Why bother with Reality when I can escape to the supernaturally fantastic?” I perceive this to be a large portion of the fiction collection (although I don’t read much fiction so I can’t say that with much confidence). It’d be fair to say that I don’t understand these people.
“Hehe, isn’t Life amusing and cute?” These books seem to be pretty uncommon. At least at my library, the Humor & Wit section is about 2.5 shelves on one bookcase, and included in the Humor & Wit section is DFW and Jonathan Franzen, so it’s certainly not all light-hearted stuff. If this is all you read, then I will probably find you frustrating. If you don’t read this at all, then I will probably find you frustrating.
+++
This post has been about book preferences and what they say about you, but the broader point is that an important distinguishing characteristic of books and of people – I’d even argue the most important distinguishing characteristic – is how seriously they take life.
My personal preference – what I want to see in other people – is that they mix it up, that they consume both the serious and the unserious. In particular, I want to see them consume some of the deadly serious DFW-like stuff (category #1) and also some of the light-hearted life-is-amusing stuff (category #6). I really don’t care about any of the categories in between.
I don’t know how to defend that feeling except to say it’s a personal preference. But there we are.
