Welcome to Ask The Book Doctor, a new recurring series about books and reading them.
My home is full of books. Because I am able to justify it as “supporting the local bookstore” and “keeping my own career afloat,” I am constantly buying books. I have four full bookshelves of fiction and three of non-fiction. There are two individual shelves of poetry, and a shelf just for the collected works of Shakespeare. There is a half a shelf of books in my office that I have not read yet, but might want to read one day. But sometimes, I pick through them all, and I do not want them. I want to read something, but what?
The problem with consuming any culture is that timing is everything. A book you read as a teen and loved might do nothing for you now. A book you quit after 20 pages a few years ago might be your new favorite. Sometimes books are just bad, but often—in my experience—I struggle to choose the right good book at the right time.
Recently I wanted to read, but I didn’t know what to read, so I went to a trusted friend and reader (Brandy) and asked her what she’d read recently that she’d loved. I read that, and she was right. It ruled. But not everyone is a professional writer with friends who read constantly and have exquisite perfect taste. Everyone, I think, deserves to be recommended books in their time of need, to be helped when they want to be, which is why I am introducing this new column, Ask The Book Doctor.
The book doctor (me) will take questions from readers and give them prescriptions for books, articles, or something else that might cure their problem. I read mostly literary and commercial fiction, and works in translation. But don’t worry. Like all doctors, I know many specialists whom I can refer a patient to if they need specific genre advice that I cannot manage on my own.
This week, for the first column in this series, we’re beginning with a classic conundrum: the reading slump. There is nothing that makes me crazier than being unable to read. I’m a writer, for Christ’s sake. In theory, I should be reading all the time, every day. But reality isn’t like that. Sometimes you’re depressed, and sometimes you’re going through something emotionally that zaps all of your desire for art. But the worst kind of slump is the one that comes out of nowhere, which is the case I am going to deal with today.
The Case:
Today’s patient is Grace, who generously agreed to be the guinea pig for this column because she is in a terrible state. She is a librarian! We love librarians! And librarians (like writers) are always reading. So imagine her surprise and frustration when she found herself in a reading slump a couple of weeks ago. Grace said she’s very good in general at readers' advisory and getting her friends out of slumps, but she's struggling to find books for herself. This is exactly what the Book Doctor is for!
Grace reads voraciously and widely. She said she usually has a few books going (fiction, non-fiction, audiobook, maybe a bookclub book), and that she’s been trying to read more things from her own shelf, which is an admirable goal that I never manage to achieve. The most recent book she read was Abby Jimenez’s Just for the Summer, and the most recent book that got her excited was Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. She also noted that she didn’t usually care for the recommendations of BookTok.
It’s been almost three weeks since Grace’s slump began. I’m confident I can help her.
The Prescription:
For Grace, I will prescribe one book. Because she is a good reader and rarely has this problem, I do not think she will need careful dosing or any kind of rehab.
My instinct, for a slump like this with someone who is wide-ranging in their reading, is to prescribe genre. Genre books usually have stronger plots than literary fiction books, and they have momentum early on, which makes them harder to put down. It’s a little simplistic, but because Grace was recently propelled by an early Christie, I am going to prescribe her a murder mystery.
I have always loved murder mysteries. As a child, I read every book for my age range at our local library (this was before the boom in YA fiction), and because I was desperate to read more and had watched Law & Order, my mom introduced me to Christie. She wrote so many books, my mom reasoned. It would take me forever! And she was right. I loved reading Christie, and later Patricia Highsmith. Going back to a gorgeous and tight murder mystery is exactly what I think Grace needs. And because we deserve to have a little fun, I’m going to prescribe her a locked-room mystery, which is a sub-genre where the crime is committed in a space that seems impossible for an outsider to have entered. Knives Out is a locked-room mystery, and it slaps.
I am prescribing Grace: The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo.
This book came to me in the fall of 2022. My Defector co-owner Jasper Wang and I were trying to find books to distract us during the 2022 midterm results (a separate kind of book prescription that we will maybe address later). The Honjin Murders had been recommended to him by a Staff Pick card at the Shakespeare & Co. in Missoula, Mont. That store is owned by a man named Garth. Garth has an alter-ego called Garthazon who will deliver books to you on his bike. Iconic!
Since Jasper recommended The Honjin Murders to me almost three years ago, I’ve recommended it to a few close friends as a slump-breaker. It’s a tight murder mystery, but it’s also a fun read because you learn a lot about Japanese social classes before the Second World War. It was originally published in Japanese as a serial in 1946 and recently translated to English by Louise Heal Kawai in 2020. It’s set in 1937. A wedding is on the horizon, and a spooky masked man is lurking around town. Then, on the night of the wedding, there is a scream and a bit of music heard from the honeymooners room. The only sign of a killer is a single samurai sword gleaming red with blood in the white snow.
Good luck, Grace! Please report back!
If you need a consult from the Book Doctor for any of your book dilemmas, please email bookdoctor@defector.com.
