The New
Yorker's Page-Turner blog includes a book-reader coinage that got us
thinking about our own reading styles. There, Mark O'Connell confesses
his dirty little reading secret: He doesn't finish books; he's a "promiscuous reader," a book
abandoner. He writes, "I’ll start a book, get about halfway through it, and
then, even if I’m enjoying it, put it down in favor of something else." But it's
not the books, it's him. "I like reading too much. I can’t say no," he
writes. "I’ll be reading a novel and thoroughly enjoying it. Then I’ll be in a
bookshop and I’ll see something I’ve been anticipating, and I’ll buy it. I’ll
start reading the new book on the bus home
that evening, and that will be the end of the original affair. I’m certainly
invested in the relationship with the book that I’m currently reading, but I
can’t help myself from pursuing whatever new interest happens to turn my head.
Perhaps that’s just a tortuous way of admitting to being a pathetic serial
book-adulterer who’ll chase after anything in a dust jacket." He justifies his
behavior in the end, as you'd expect of a "book cheater," by saying that maybe
occasionally this is a good thing. When he finally meets the book whose
fickleness meets his own, well, perhaps he's met his match.
We understand. We, too, have occasionally set one
good book down and picked up another, and forgotten the first nearly entirely,
even though we'd been quite smitten with it before. Sometimes we engage in
threeways, fourways, or even orgies of reading, in which there are so many books
involved, well, we might not even be keeping track. It's horrible, isn't it?
But, for as many books as exist, there are also any number of different reading
types a book lover (or even a book hater) might demonstrate. What kind are
you?
The Hate
Reader. Oh, you. You pretend to be curmudgeonly, you do, but you really
just devour the reading you do in a different way. You're
loving it nearly as much as you're hating it, and maybe then some, even as
you complain the author can't put two sentences together properly or that the
book is dragging hopelessly in the middle and what kind of plot twist is that,
even? An elephant in Act 3? These characters are so poorly drawn as to be
comical! You call that a conclusion? Vampires, really? If you are a hate reader
you will finish each hate read down to its very last word, and you may well close the covers and toss the
volume across the room, but you will do it with a great, secret frisson of
satisfaction because it feels so good. You may be an aspiring, disgruntled
novelist yourself. Suggested hate reads:
Twilight; Fifty
Shades of Grey; any much-celebrated novelist's latest offering that's
bound to be arguably less than all the hype.
The Chronological Reader. Slow and steady
wins the race, dear reader. You are the tortoise to the promiscuous reader's
distracted-at-any-turn hare. You buy a book, you read it. You buy another, you
read it. Perhaps you borrow a book at the library. You read it, and then you
return it, and you get another, which you will read. You may not remember where
you began, what the first book that kicked it all off was, and you likely have
no idea where you'll end, but the point is, you will go through each book
methodically and reasonably, until it is done. You might discard a book, but
only if there is very good cause, and it will bring you a sense of deep unease,
so you'll probably pick it back up and finish it anyway. You are very good at
puzzles, and the most reliable of all your friends. Suggested chronological reads: It doesn't
matter; you'll get to them all, eventually.
The
Book-Buster. Is your home strewn with books scattered about, this way
and that, their pages turned, their covers folded over, their backs broken and
their limbs splayed out on either side? You are a destroyer of books, but you
love them so. Your spirit book character is Lennie of Of Mice and Men.
You just want to hug the books, squeeze them tighter and tighter, you adore them
so much, you really don't know you're hurting them. And then you've got a
paperback with a huge chunk pulled out of it, or a first edition that's suddenly
waterlogged from bath water. You take your books out into the sun and their
pages bleach away to nothing, but you keep them anyway, because they are books
and you love books. Suggested book-buster
reads: Whatever you like, but buy a Kindle.
Delayed Onset
Reader #1. You are without a doubt a book lover, and when you walk into
a bookstore or any place books are available, you can't help yourself, you buy
one or many. When you get home you put them aside, often reverently, as if they
were art, displaying them on a bookshelf
or propping them up on your bedside table, pages ready to meet your eyes as soon
as you have the moment. But you're very, very busy, and days, weeks, or months
may go by before you actually crack open one of these books. It's not for lack
of trying! When you finally do, you will be overjoyed by all the learning and
emotional depth and humor and writing quality that exists in this book that's
been sitting within reach all along, and you will be amazed that you waited so
long to ever open it. Suggested delayed onset
#1 suggestions: The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman; The
Princess Bride, by William Goldman; Lolita by Nabokov; Anne of
Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery.
Delayed Onset
Reader #2. You are not a book lover. You buy books so you can show them
off. If you are wealthy, you may have a mahogany-paneled library for expressly this purpose. Since you
don't waste time on books, we won't waste time discussing you, but if you ever
do pick up a book and read it and love it, you can consider yourself cured.
Suggested delayed onset #2
suggestions: The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, The Hobbit,
Gone With the Wind, A Wrinkle in Time, The Chronicles of Narnia.
The Bookophile. More than reading, you just
love books. Old ones, the way they smell, the crinkles and yellowing of the
pages; new ones, the way they smell, too, the crispness, running your hands over
a stack of them at the bookstore. You like books rescued from the street as much
as signed first editions; you like drugstore paperbacks, you like hardcover new
releases, you like it all. You just like books. To you, they are an object of beauty, and you would never, ever hurt them
in any way. Suggested bookophile
reads: Anything you can get your hands on. God, that's gorgeous, isn't
it?
The
Anti-Reader. You are the book version of the person who claims "I never
watch TV! I don't even own one!" You never
read books, because you find them too long. You consider blog posts too long,
too, and are always penning comments that say "TLDR" to express how short
something can truly be and still be meaningful. Unfortunately, you are the lady
or man who doth protest too much, and you may instead have some deep insecurity
about reading that led you to this book-flavorless existence. Pick up a book—a
short one, say, start small—and open it, and let your eyes just rest on it for a
few quiet moments. You may find yourself changed, because a life without reading
is a sad one indeed. Suggested anti-reader
books: To get you started, try pop-up books, graphic novels, and comics
as well as something on topics you'd normally enjoy watching on TV.
The Cross-Under.
You are a grown-up who reads Y.A. or kids books, or a kid who reads
adult books, and there is a place for you in society, finally. Your existence
acknowledged after so many years, you no longer have to feel shame at your
questionable reading habits but can instead bask in the admiration of book blogs
and feel a part of the vanguard. You are not ruled by categories; you are a free
thinker. When you were in elementary school a librarian told you a book was "Too
old for you." You read it anyway, and there's been no going back. Suggested cross-under reads: For kids,
Dickens, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Vonnegut, Harper Lee. For adults: Collins,
Rowling, Alexie,
Chbosky,
Lowry.
The
Multi-Tasker. This is the nice way of saying you are a promiscuous
reader, but it's not that you don't finish reads. Instead, you just have a sort
of hippie reading way about you, free love or some such. You might start the day
out with a few pages from one novelist, then read something entirely different
on the subway, and when you come home from work, another work as well. Your
bedtime read, too, might be different, and all in all, when you count up the
books, you've got quite a lot of irons in the fire all at the same time. Do you
confuse characters or plots? Do you give more attention to some books than to
others? Perhaps. The point is, you're not ready for a book commitment just yet,
and you're doing a brilliant job dating them all in the meantime. Suggested multi-tasking reads: Short story
and essay collections, novellas.
The Sleepy Bedtime Reader. Do you feel the
only time you have to read is when you're about to go to sleep? You tote your
book into bed with you and it's so very comfortable and the book is so
deliciously good, but you cannot keep your eyes open and end up waking up with a
book on your face and your light still on at 3 a.m.? Tell no one; if you are
lucky, there is no one there to witness your shame, save the characters with
whom you are becoming quite close. Suggested
sleepy bedtime reads: Whatever you like, just sit in a chair—unless you
like falling asleep with a book on your face.
Update: We
listed more
book-reader types, here.
Fonte:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/08/what-kind-book-reader-are-you-diagnostics-guide/56337/