- Don't ask me how the book is. I won't be able to give you an accurate answer because you're distracting me from reading it.
- When you inevitably DO interrupt me to ask how it is, and I answer monosyllabically, don't then ask me what it's about. I don't want to expend a single word to tell you how it is, and I definitely don't want to expend multiple words to explain a plot you don't care about and won't retain. Find a bookstore or go on Amazon.
- If someone is reading, for instance, to pick a wildly random example, Anna Karenina, chances are slim that you'll convince them that they MUST check out anything by Janet Evanovitch because "she comes up with the cutest ideas." There's a place for both kinds of books to exist, but there's not a hell of a lot of Venn diagramming in there, and furthermore, the time to pitch books is when the person you're trying to sell isn't reading.
- Don't have a completely random conversation with someone while they're reading...in other words, learn to identify what books look like. There are a couple people here at work who strike up utterly random conversations with me EVERY TIME they see me reading in the cafeteria, and it's utterly beyond me why they do it.
- Multiply all these rules by about a million when you don't know the person.
The reading world thanks you for abiding by these few simple rules.
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"If someone is reading, for instance, to pick a wildly random example, Anna Karenina, chances are slim that you'll convince them that they MUST check out anything by Janet Evanovitch because 'she comes up with the cutest ideas.'"
ReplyDeleteAmen, sista.