Reading In The Dark
September 27th 2006 20:27
Image: www.johnboyne.com
I’m going to ask you to do something a little unusual this week. I call it ‘reading in the dark’.
I know it’s very common on this site, and many others, to recommend books and give you some insight into their content. But I would like to recommend a book to you – The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne – but I’m not going to tell you what it’s about. A weird concept, I know, but that is exactly the circumstances under which I found this book. It was given to me by a colleague who suggested I read it. That’s no problem, I love it when people recommend books to me. So I picked it up to have a look. The striped cover or title gave me no clues as to its content, so I turned to the blurb, as you would. And low and behold, for the first time ever that I can remember, a blurb tells me nothing! No setting, no year, no genre, no plot. Only the vaguest hint of a nine year old boy called Bruno who arrives at a fence.
Can you remember ever reading a book without having the faintest idea what it was about? I searched my extremely crowded and muddled cranium for this experience and found naught. It is just not something we, as readers do. There is usually so much information made available about a book’s genre. I mean, first you only have to look at the cover of most books and you can get an inkling of a storyline, even if you miss the mark slightly, you’ve got a good shot at summarizing a general theme. Then, as I said earlier, there’s the blurb, a helpful little tool in book selection, even if it can work against you, giving an exaggerated version of things.
I applaud the publishers for this move. I think it’s brilliant. I have books lined up ready to be read, but I queue jumped this book simply because I couldn’t wait to see what lie between the covers.
And, thankfully I wasn’t disappointed. Get a hold of this book and read it – and no cheating!
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Comment by Joy
1) The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
The name was delicious, but the jacket cover had since fallen off. It was the only child-friendly book (you know, my grandma had A LOT of recipe books) in my grandparent's house. And I was a bored child at 8 years old (or 9? or 10?)
2) Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
The front cover of the hardcover only has a scribbled star and a stick figure girl and his name. The back of the book has the most abstract passage from the book. It was a great read.
Comment by Joanne
Open Book