You're reading about reading about reading.

One year ago, I started a book called How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. It was genius, it was full of literature trivia, and it made me think about books in a different way. It made my list of the best books of last year. I told everyone I knew to go out and read it.

And I never even finished it.

Never let it be said that I cannot follow instructions.

I do seem to have trouble reading nonfiction. (Hence why I got five nonfiction books on my last library run. Cause, you know, I'm smart like that.) But this time, once again, I really had no excuse. Curiosities of Literature: A Feast for Book Lovers by John Sutherland is, well, book trivia. Which is what I love, right? Why wouldn't a reader like to read about books?

The subject do seem to be fairly popular, or at least common, among writers. Half of Stephen King's novels are about writers (for example, both 'Salem's Lot and Under the Dome). Inkheart by Cornelia Funke was a popular children's novel about individuals who could make books come to life, and I've seen that trope somewhere else before (but I'm not sure where -- probably in picture books).



Yet (in the proud tradition of How to Talk) I never finished Curiosities of Literature. I think there are two big reasons why it fails. One is that the profession of reading and writing is not as glamorous as people make it out to be. The other is that the book is too trivial.

Let's look at that first factor. This is less a problem with this particular book and more a problem with the genre of book-books in general. Writing, as I've found, takes a really long time. I spent somewhere upwards of two-three hours a day in the last days of National Novel Writing Month, when I was behind about ten thousand words. It was fun. It was fulfilling. It was not dramatic.

Reading isn't dramatic, either. (Nor is looking at paintings -- thank you, Dan Brown.) Inkheart tried to disguise this by quoting from other (better) books before each chapter, but the fact is that you can't describe much about words flowing from someone's mouth. It's like reading a piece of sheet music without hearing the music itself -- pointless.

There is one exception to this. Avi wrote an excellent book (introducing me to the author) entitled Who Stole 'The Wizard of Oz'? It pulls trivia from several popular young adult books, like Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland, to solve a mystery. So trivia can be intersting, and that's what would draw a reader to Curiosities of Literature.

Alas, you have to be a really involved reader to enjoy Curiosities. I knew only a few of the authors mentioned by Sutherland, and those were bits of trivia I already knew because I had found out all I could about Stephen King and J.K. Rowling beforehand. You see, the problem with making a book of trivia overarcing an entire medium is that I'm not going to be interested in most of the trivia. If I've never read Bronte, I'm not going to be interested in her. These pieces of trivia -- about relationships, lost manuscripts, and such -- are so tiny that I can't be interested in them if every other name is unfamiliar to me.

So that's Curiosities. Mildy diverting, but not enough to make you curious. And I really must remember to stop getting so much nonfiction.