Reading and Eating: Cravings, Quirks, and Culture

I know at least two unrelated people who refuse to start a book if they can’t read the last page first. It doesn’t matter if it’s nonfiction, a thriller, or a mystery that might be spoiled by knowing the ending. The first person presented the practice as logical: if the writing quality doesn’t last until the end of the book, there’s no point in getting invested in it and being frustrated. The other person acknowledged it was more of a compulsion and had no logical reason. Even if he tried to start at the beginning to read straight through, he felt antsy and uncommitted until he checked the end.

I realized that I had unconscious reading quirks myself the first time a GR member sent me a message asking about my books. Did I realize that the preview of the first book at lulu.com seemed to start in the middle? At the time, I had some issues with Lulu’s preview options in terms of accepting formats, but being a hobbyist at writing, I thought of book selection from my perspective as a reader. And I assumed fellow readers approached previews as I did.

Whenever I pick up a book in the library or bookstore, I open it at random and read several paragraphs at each section. I'm always frustrated with digital book previews that offer only a brief selection at the beginning. Most of that is taken up by the title page and chapter headings, and writers in general tend to take special care in the opening pages. Before I invest time, money, or imagination in a book, I want to be sure that the writing style is something that I can stay connected to all the way through. But after that exchange with the very nice person - who went on to buy the book anyway - and consulting with others about previews, I realized that I was just as quirky as my “read the last page first” friends.

It occurs to me when reading discussion topics on how each of us chooses which books to read that there is likely an undercurrent of idiosyncrasy running below the very logical methods expressed. There are those who read blurbs and reviews, and those that refuse to read reviews until later. There are those who don’t consider anything but 4-5 star ratings, and others who read only 3 star ones (assuming the 4-5 were somehow exaggerated or gamed). I’ve even run across those who are currently reading books that got rated 2 and below (to see if books were unfairly penalized for some reason, or simply ahead of its time) and still others who only read those who don’t have ratings yet at all. I must confess that I often do that last one myself. I do like being on the frontier of undiscovered books occasionally.

When at a birthday party for a work colleague recently, I was struck by the the similarities in approach to reading choices and eating choices. Now, I’ll admit upfront that I’ve spent most of my life as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, but otherwise consider different foods as a wonderful reflection of human culture and interaction. I still follow my mother’s age-old admonition to try something first before deciding that I won’t like it. At the party, it seemed to me that everyone was trying to be healthy, many were trying to lose weight, and most had a decided sweet tooth. There was a lively discussion of foods, which led to a friendly debate on what was healthy and appropriate to eat, which reminded me quite a bit of GR discussion posts about approaches to book choices. There were reasons based on what could reasonably be considered objective criteria, but there was a great deal of what could rightly be considered quirks, whimsy, cultural conditioning, and associations with happy memories.

Most of those attending were readers and we often talked about books when we had lunch together. I was tempted to explore whether those with definite opinions about what they absolutely would not even try a bite of had the same approach to books. I decided not to, though; I didn’t want to distract attention at the time from the honoree and the happy frivolity of a limited work break. But I’ve been trying to notice ever since whether there are parallels. I’m guessing that our approach to food was determined quite a lot by our upbringing and local setting, though our own personalities and genetic makeup play a large part. In my case, my parents aren’t vegetarian, but they’ve always had a garden and when I was young, my father raised poultry. My mother was a nurse who believed a healthy diet was one that was balanced with a range of options in moderate amounts. There were no forbidden foods, but there was the requirement that foods providing nutrition should come before those that were simply fun.

There were always books in the house, from classics, to popular series, to encyclopedias, atlases, and other references. I was never told what to read explicitly, but somehow my sibs and I ended up with a healthy inclination toward a wide range of material in what I hope are moderate amounts. I do like to read things that are dense in ideas or beauty, but I also choose occasionally what I used to call “junk-food reading”. The latter would be formula books where one can pretty much know in advance the arc of the story, the style and feel, and that everything will turn out fine in the end. I don’t read those on a daily basis, any more than I could eat something sweet three meals a day, but I do crave them sometimes.

I wonder if those who are only happy reading certain genres or styles have similar propensities about foods? Are those who prefer reading popular fiction with thousands of good reviews more likely to prefer packaged or prepared foods? Are those who like reading nonfiction books more likely to be interested in the biochemistry of cooking, and learning to do as much as they can from scratch? Are those who prefer the undiscovered and the indi-est of indies more likely to seek out the most esoteric cuisines? And are the strictest judges of what other people write also those most critical about food quality and preparation?

Does adherence to the childhood instruction to finish everything on our plates make us feel more compelled to finish whatever book we start, even if we aren’t enjoying it? Alternately, are those of us who feel comfortable in putting even a few bites away for later if we’re feeling full more likely to put down a book for a bit or at least to skip parts? And to belabor the premise even further, are the increasing patterns away from formal meals, and more individual grabs of food on the run or at the desk when working, making us less inclined to read longer books?

I have no idea. But it seems to me that there are advantages and disadvantages to the brave new world of greater availability in variety of both food and reading. Arguably, economics and politics are present in both, as well as an unacceptable gap in the opportunity of access between those who control and profit and those who are marginalized. Even so, those somewhere in the middle who have more choices in what they consume – in either sense – still could be said to be coalescing into fairly rigid camps occasionally. Was there always such a debate among friends or colleagues of what was considered healthy food? Or are the very real health problems of the affluent, e.g. diabetes, hypertension, obesity, bulimia-anorexia, food allergies, as well as the competing goals of globally-marketed products versus local interests, causing us to limit ourselves and thus making the differences between us more acute? And is the wider availability of books because of electronic and independent publishing making us more or less likely to entrench ourselves into genres?