by Lauren Leto
Reading is a solitary activity. You can be surrounded by a thousand people, but processing the written words in your brain is something only you are going through. That’s one of the reasons it feels so good to read on a park bench. Look up, people are walking by going about their days. Look down, the protagonist is confronting his family in a heated debate. Look up, the couple on the bench nearby are kissing. Look down, the hero is avenging his love. A good novel presents you with an engaging world that is a reality only for you.
A story is unbiased with respect to the reader. It presupposes nothing about the audience. Books don’t require that you read them in a certain place, at a certain time, or with certain equipment. Just eyes. Literature connects by transporting people to the same consciousness; a stranger who’s read the same book you’ve read, whose eyes passed over the same words, may be a part of a completely different environment, and even time, but for a while, at least, they shared a world with you. A community is built out of that isolated experience; an author has the power to build worlds and to populate them not only with characters but also with their readers.
While books are unbiased, the mark of a good one is that it makes some demands of you. Good books command study, presenting you with the puzzle of how and why their plot is laid the way it is laid—without examination the meaning is lost. In contemplating the answers to their questions, we collectively analyze in our book clubs, articles, and book reviews. A great author weaves a tale with a knot just loose enough to allow us to unravel it. A book read without deliberate consideration is a waste for both the author and the reader. Talking with others about our experience with the book is a way of celebrating the art. That we were pulled into the same existence and we emerged emotionally charged but each struck in a unique way is the beauty of reading.
So, we squeal the first time a new love tells us one of his favorite books is the same as ours. We bond with friends over plots that made us cry. We talk endlessly about how unlovable the author made a character. We fight over whether an ending was satisfying. We can’t stop exclaiming when a book puts all the pieces together just right. We go on and on about the inexplicable phrasing of a character’s emotion that changed our perspective on the feeling the next time we experienced it. We might not all agree on the nuances, we might emerge from the tale dissatisfied and jaded, but the joy of examining and debating our opinions is unrivaled.
The greatest argument for the oneness of humanity is the recognition that we are all emotional beings, subject to the fantasies of a story. We talk about this event we went through alone because it connects us together. You’re never more human than when you realize a sentence has the power to push and pull the emotions of millions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANKS TO MY EDITORS Michael Signorelli and Jason Sack for their patience.
Many, many thanks to my agent, Erin Malone, for her guidance.
Thank you to Patrick Moberg for his continuous, contagious creativity.
To my parents, thanks for all the books.
About the Author
LAUREN LETO DROPPED OUT of law school after starting the popular website Texts from Last Night. She coauthored the book Texts from Last Night: All the Texts No One Remembers Sending. She grew up in the Detroit area but currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
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OTHER BOOKS BY LAUREN LETO
Texts from Last Night: All the Texts No One Remembers Sending
(with Ben Bator)
Credits
Cover design by Jarrod Taylor
Cover illustrations © CSA Images
Copyright
JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS LOVER. Copyright © 2012 by Lauren Leto. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-207014-2
12 13 14 15 16 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 978-0-06-207015-9
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