1DebiCates
I'm talking about Nancy Pearl. I like her ideas!
You might have heard of her rule of 50 for a guilt-free solution to when you can put aside a book you are not enjoying and chalk it up on your DNF, Did Not Finish, list.
She suggest that anyone at any age can DNF after reading 50 pages. But, as we get older, over 50, we can accelerate that process. We have statistically less time left and we know ourselves pretty well by then. So, after 50 you get to subtract your age from 100 to arrive at the magic number of guilt-free DNF. If you are 51, you can DNF at page 49 (100-51), if you are 67 you can DNF at page 33 (100-67). Easy and guilt-free! At age 100 and beyond, well, you can then simply judge a book by its cover! ha
But this idea of hers intrigues me more: Pearl's Four Doorways as guides to our reading pleasure. Those doorways are Story, Character, Setting, and Language. She suggests that you can take any fiction of any genre, also including narrative non-fiction, and cut it into a pie of 4 different sized pieces to represent those doorways and use them analyze a book or books you have read that you've enjoyed and want to read more of. That will tell you (and tell librarians or booksellers) what you like to read, guiding you to your next enjoyable read.
I've been contemplating what books I like best and have always known language is important to me and that I don't need a strong story (plot). But that doesn't mean I want a book of poetry (although I often do), I also want a setting and then maybe a character. So my ideal reading pie would be something like (I'm thinking of my current all time favorite book, Timothy; or Notes of an Abject Reptile
55% language
20% setting
15% character
10% story
Of course it's not science, but merely an important indicator. Nor does it mean I wouldn't like a different mix of those percentages now and then. But it does mean that a book rated as having those similar percentages or ratios would probably be one I would be glad to read through to the last page.
I haven't seen this idea take-off (not on Goodreads, LibraryThing, or Amazon or any other booksellers site), but I wish it would! I'll be adding those percentages to my reviews going forward.
Here is Nancy Pearl on a TedX talk where she explains how her decades of experience as a bookseller and librarian helped her come to her innovative approach to recommending books to match the reader:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjDMbixPSeQ&t=21s
See it applied to books here:
https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/user_profile/72886252
You might have heard of her rule of 50 for a guilt-free solution to when you can put aside a book you are not enjoying and chalk it up on your DNF, Did Not Finish, list.
She suggest that anyone at any age can DNF after reading 50 pages. But, as we get older, over 50, we can accelerate that process. We have statistically less time left and we know ourselves pretty well by then. So, after 50 you get to subtract your age from 100 to arrive at the magic number of guilt-free DNF. If you are 51, you can DNF at page 49 (100-51), if you are 67 you can DNF at page 33 (100-67). Easy and guilt-free! At age 100 and beyond, well, you can then simply judge a book by its cover! ha
But this idea of hers intrigues me more: Pearl's Four Doorways as guides to our reading pleasure. Those doorways are Story, Character, Setting, and Language. She suggests that you can take any fiction of any genre, also including narrative non-fiction, and cut it into a pie of 4 different sized pieces to represent those doorways and use them analyze a book or books you have read that you've enjoyed and want to read more of. That will tell you (and tell librarians or booksellers) what you like to read, guiding you to your next enjoyable read.
I've been contemplating what books I like best and have always known language is important to me and that I don't need a strong story (plot). But that doesn't mean I want a book of poetry (although I often do), I also want a setting and then maybe a character. So my ideal reading pie would be something like (I'm thinking of my current all time favorite book, Timothy; or Notes of an Abject Reptile
55% language
20% setting
15% character
10% story
Of course it's not science, but merely an important indicator. Nor does it mean I wouldn't like a different mix of those percentages now and then. But it does mean that a book rated as having those similar percentages or ratios would probably be one I would be glad to read through to the last page.
I haven't seen this idea take-off (not on Goodreads, LibraryThing, or Amazon or any other booksellers site), but I wish it would! I'll be adding those percentages to my reviews going forward.
Here is Nancy Pearl on a TedX talk where she explains how her decades of experience as a bookseller and librarian helped her come to her innovative approach to recommending books to match the reader:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjDMbixPSeQ&t=21s
See it applied to books here:
https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/user_profile/72886252
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