Who Decides What We Read?

I've been in something of a frustration mode lately. I was recently fortunate enough to meet with a literary agent to discuss a book project I had been working on since the summer. At that meeting, we discussed the fact that a family member already had a book contract to write a biography of his long ago relative. "I don't think the market can support two books about X," the agent told me.

After having spent two seemingly futile days in archives in Washington, I was tired and vulnerable, and I caved without much of a struggle. My response was something along the lines of saying that I felt relieved.

The agent and I kicked around a few other potential book ideas, and I left his office with the promise to send him a proposal for one of them.

A few weeks after that meeting, I e-mailed a friend about what happened. Her response was interesting. She works in a library dedicated to people who have lived in the White House, and she observed how many multiple books there are in the library on the same subject. How, she wondered, could this agent determine that two books could not be written about the same person?

How indeed? Just who does determines what we read?

Because I still see myself as a struggling writer (my definition of no longer struggling is when my writing earns enough to cover the research trips and pay my bills), I am sensitive to books that get published and reviewed. In the last few years, I have spotted a very disturbing trend. Authors who know editors of influential and widely circulated, and widely respected, publications will have their work reviewed - everywhere! A good example is the latest work by Joan Didion, whom I hate to give any additional press to, because she has had more than enough. I've read about her in Vanity Fair. She was on the cover of New York Magazine. The New Yorker reviewed her book, as did the New York Times, the Washington Post, and goodness knows who else.

I am sorry for Ms. Didion's pain. I fully understand the need to emote and work through hurt and grief, and I definitely know that writing offers that outlet better than other media. But do I have to be inundated with the details of her life story and her daily habits? Isn't there a limit to the exposure?

It is difficult to break into the clique that arbitrates what we will have available to read. Only by getting beyond the more obvious suggestions of reading options and digging deeper into the great variety of what is published through university presses, small independent publishing firms, and the mid-list books of trade publishers that get little attention can we move beyond the books that are hyped and thrown at us.

Through one of my Twitter feeds, I happened upon an interesting article in the New York Daily News: "The Most Overrated Books of 2011." This blogpost says it all, and more succinctly than I just have, too. (http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/node/126739)