Going By the Label

One criteria I follow while picking up a book is that the writing should appeal to me. It should be well written even if the story isn’t so convincing. Of course one cannot know the story without reading the whole book but a glance at the pages reveals the quality of writing. If it is good and appears interesting enough to me I pick up the book. I don’t bother if it is written by Amitav Ghosh or Elmore Leonard, the book should entertain. That way, fortunately I have managed to pick up several good books over the years. However I don’t always go by reviews usually though I read as many as I can. But sometimes I am influenced by book reviews and end up buying the books reviewed only to find the book is something else altogether. Sometimes it is perilous to go by book reviews.

One of the perils of book reviews is that the critics (and others) tend to classify books as ‘literary’ or ‘commercial’ which are labels some find misleading. In a well crafted article about the dangers of such classification Aditya Sudarshan argues against such a system in his article, ‘Dangerous Demarcations’ in the latest issue of ‘Literary Review’ supplement of ‘The Hindu.’ The writer says that it is the marketers who are to be blamed for such labels that are misleading both to writers as well as the readers. Such labels make us assume that ‘literary’ books are well crafted and ‘commercial’ books are written for money.

Interestingly, the writer also blames the Indian tendency of discriminating between books depending on their subject, dismissing books by the new Indian writers as having no literary merit while looking up to those Indian writers (mostly living abroad) of the previous generation. He says such discrimination undermines the talent of the new writers and is not encouraging to them. Read the interesting opinion piece here:

http://www.hindu.com/lr/2009/07/05/stories/2009070550010100.htm