Graham Storrs

Life is short. If you only read 20 or 30 novels a year, as I do, you’ve only got time to read about 1500 of them between being old enough to start and being too gaga to remember where the library is. Maybe 2,000 if you start young and keep a close watch on your marbles.

Of the novels I’ve read so far, the great majority were so-so, a few dozen were unelievably awful, and maybe as many as a hundred were really, really good. I don’t suppose novelists are getting any better with time, so I guess the chances of any new novel I pick up being really, really good are what they always were – rather less than 1 in ten.

For me, most of my reading years are behind me and I would very much like the ones still left to be full of excellent novels, nothing so-so, and certainly no more dross. To achieve this, I believe I have three main strategies.

1. Hook into a review service that delivers great books I know I will like. This is a good idea in theory but, in practice, I have never found one. Perhaps my taste is peculiar, but even in the wide world of the Web, where all tastes are catered for, I can’t seem to find anyone who recommends the kind of thing I enjoy. Even among my friends and acquaintances, I don’t know anybody who likes just what I like. And as for exciting new technologies, I haven’t met a recommendation engine yet that wasn’t brain dead (“People who bought ‘Vermilion Sands’ also bought ‘Secrets Revealed: How to Make a Squillion from Your Blog’ and ‘Gloaming: Teenager-Loving Vampires in A Glasgow High-School”.)

2. Re-read those wonderful books I loved the first time round. To be honest I’ve been leaning towards this strategy for a while now. I recently re-read ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ and just now I’m working my way through the Foundation trilogy (having found it in a second-hand bookshop a couple of weeks ago.) Essentially this is just tapping into another kind of review service – using my own memory of what was good as a recommendation – along with the hope that I’ve forgotten the details enough so I can enjoy rediscovering the text. (I have my top 50-ish list of sci-fi books on Amazon if you’re curious.)

3. Read the ‘classics’. Again, a sort of review service, this time a crowd-sourced recommendation that spans generations of readers. It’s not a bad strategy, actually. Almost all the ‘classics’ I’ve read have been great books. Sadly, I’ve already read a lot of the ones I know about (although I’d gladly re-read all of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Thomas Hardy, and so on.) Which puts me in uncharted waters again. Some of the classics have been disappointing. Henry James, for example, sends me to sleep, and Dostoyevsky drives me up the wall. Even Dickens is a bit patchy (although I haven’t met a novel by his mate Wilkie Collins that I haven’t liked.) So even the wisdom of crowds when it has stood the test of time, can sometimes let you down.

In terms of success, strategy 2 wins hands down, followed by strategy 3. And that’s a problem. Being an author, I don’t want to recommend to people that they only read old stuff – much of it for free from Project Gutenberg or available only from second-hand shops. New authors don’t make any money that way. What’s more, no-one would ever discover today’s Ursula K. le Guin or J.G. Ballard – whoever they may be (if you happen to know, do tell.)

So I must recommend strategy 1 to everybody. Find yourself a great reviewer who is perfectly in tune with your personal taste and rely on them to identify all the great new releases as they come out. It doesn’t work for me but that’s only because my tase is more refined exquisite special exceptional … Oh you know what I mean.