I’m always confused by these types of questions. They lead me to wonder if there are actually people out there who search for books that meet a set of remarkably specific criteria because they want to read something that perfectly matches those stipulations.

While I can understand wanting something made to order when you’re getting ready to sit down and eat, I don’t get it when it comes to books. Authors are meant to display style. Books and stories have atmospehere. There’s mood. There’s characterization. There’s conflict. There’s suspense.

Who are these readers who are perpetually on the hunt for books and stories that match up perfectly with the parameters they’ve mapped out in their minds? Why aren’t they just writing their own stories instead of expending all the time and effort to track down something to read that so perfectly fits in with the blueprint they have in their minds that there’s zero mystery to anything?

Sure, I can understand enjoying a particular KIND of book or story, or enjoying the particular style of an author or group of authors… But intentionally sniffing out books that feature oddly specific plot points and characters or settings? How incredibly boring is that? If you already know the story and there’s no question of what you’re going to find between the covers it detracts so much from the overall experience of reading.

Do these people go to museums and head straight for the artwork that perfectly exemplifies the exact specifications they have for pieces of art? That sounds like my worst nightmare. I have a reading list that’s somewhere around 500 entries long right now. Imagine how many titles would make the list if I only wanted to read one specific kind of book.

Books are like people. They have character, just like people. Would I read a book that’s terribly written just because the premise is decent? No. I stopped doing that pretty much right around the time my age could be expressed with a double digit number. Would I read an awful book because some plot point resembles something I enjoyed in another book at some point in the past? If it’s already been done well, why slog through rubbish that’s derivative?

Anyone who really and truly LOVES books and reading wants to find new things to read all the time. When I was two I ate pureed veg every day. I’m certainly not going to spend my adult life feeding my brain and my soul the same boring dreck day in and day out for years. Live a little. You don’t know whether or not you’ll like the things you haven’t tried. Quit obsessing over what you like about the same old tired and boring and predictable books you chose specifically because they’re comfortable and safe and branch out and become a real reader.

I don’t remember much about his characterization, but I was completely blown away by how much I loved that book. Going into it my only frame of reference for his work was The Catcher in the Rye and a smattering of his other short stories in the odd anthology here and there, so I wasn’t expecting to love it anywhere near as much as I did. I came away with a great deal of respect for Salinger as an author. It’s top-notch fiction, and for people like me who tried reading Salinger a few times before and didn’t come away impressed, it’s a total and complete game-changer.