How we choose books to share

After our recent live interview with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a few of us got chatting and the topic of how books get chosen. Since we have had a lot of new members in the last couple of months, I thought it was worth outlining how that happens and what you can expect.

Obviously the main determinant is my taste. I particularly like books with a lot of history and surprising (to me) insights; I enjoy reading about science and technology, but it’s more that I like understanding how the world is affected by different systems.

I love a well-turned sentence and delight in nicely-drawn characters. I’m a sucker for a little meditative thinking alongside some strong reporting.

There are practical considerations, too. Is the author going to do an interview? That’s preferable but not necessary. And can I actually get hold of enough copies at a good price? Sometimes it’s harder than I would like. 

But more broadly, there are a few guiding principles I use.

I try not to pick obvious titles. Popular and good are two different things, so I try to mainly choose books that you wouldn’t easily find without a guide. Writing a work of non-fiction is hard enough, but the reality is that even great authors don’t get much in the way of support from their publisher. The attention all crams towards a handful of books that can be sold and marketed to lots of people, which is definitely not the same as good. (So we’re not going to read Careless People, which is meh anyway. And that’s one reason why this month’s book is Paved Paradise over, say, Abundance, which is getting a full-court press from the Ezra Klein PR machine.) 

I have to read it all the way through. This may sound obvious, but it’s actually not true of every recommendation service: I don’t pick a book unless I’ve read it all. My notebook tells me that I generally complete about 30 books a year, nearly all non-fiction, but I am DNFing way more these days as I look for good picks for you all. As soon as I know something isn’t going to be worth sharing, there’s a much higher likelihood that I won’t pursue it to the end. But you can be sure that I’ve read the books you get from cover to cover.

I don’t touch the same topic too often. I’ve always read pretty widely, but I also have a tendency to go deep, bingeing on a particular topic until I feel satisfied. But for the club, I’m deliberately trying not to choose the same kind of book too often. That goes for subject matter—so far we’ve covered politics, environment, bioethics, immigration and more—but also for approach. I love a good reported narrative, and something with a lot of history, and something where a person wrestles with uncomfortable truths. But I am trying to engage more with different styles and approaches. That said, I’m never going to pick many memoirs—they feel so personal and individual that I think they have to be really, really good to meet the wide spread of interests we have here.

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Hopefully that gives you a little insight. I am always, always open to recommendations—I’ve already tried out a few recommendations from club members this year, and am about to try another couple. So if you have suggestions, email them over to me by replying to this message.

Onwards

Bobbie