For most of my life I've read books in a vacuum. Pick it up, read, enjoy, repeat. A classic, tried and true method. I picked up Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea, and decided to watch a biographical video about him before reading it. It elevated the reading experience because now I could understand the inside of his mind a little better. I could see what parts of his actual life were influential to his story.
Now I'm about to read The Little Prince, and knowing about the authors life, his passion for aviation, his crash, his desire for a son, I'm much more invested in starting The Little Prince.
Do you like to understand the context of what you're reading? What's your opinion on all this?
by justkeepbreathing94
24 Comments
personally i like to enjoy the work for what it is and to know next to nothing about it until i read it. i like the surprise
For me is usually the opposite. I like to research the author or the book itself, after I read it. And only if I enjoyed it.
Absolutely, I usually take book recommendations after I’ve learned something about the author. I remember reading the old man and the sea and the stranger in high school with zero context and just having to pretend that I thought they were great works
I totally agree. I like such different genres that I kinda need to frame my brain in preparation before certain books, otherwise I won’t enjoy it.
Especially certain classics like Moby Dick. It was all naval language, I was bored to tears at first. Then I looked up the themes and his style and now Im enjoying getting through it, because I understand it better.
Yeah! Going into a work with some kind of solid grounding usually makes it a lot easier to read. Otherwise I usually spend the first chunk of the book trying to figure out *how* I’m supposed to be reading it.
I really like book reviews that can successfully contextualize the book without completely spoiling the plot; they’re one of the best ways to convince me to pick something up.
Not all books are like that.
I’ve read *The Stand* by Stephen King without knowing anything about it, and I think that it was the best way (for me at least) to do it.
Bonus – I’ve read it in the end of 2019, 2-3 months before Covid really picked up.
I can go either way. for classics (and often non western authors), I do think it helps. I’ll take anything that gives me a better sense of context before I jump in.
for contemporary books I don’t find it as important. that’s especially true with one-off writers. but i tend to follow up if I like a writer. I’ll read anything else they’ve written, and read articles/interviews if I come across them. sooner or later I’ll find my way to their Wikipedia page. information about them accumulates in my mind. it does all play a part in my experience of their work
I’m set on reading 1812 by Adam Zamoyski alongnside War and Peace.
I feel this way particularly about authors from non-western countries.
Knowing how their own history and context influences their writing makes it more fun to read. I’ve been reading a lot of African literature lately and I feel like I would miss so much if I didn’t know the background on the Nigerian Civil War or West African ethnic groups or the key players in South African apartheid.
(Same goes for a _lot_ of Salman Rushdie and Indian history – I couldn’t possibly read Midnight’s Children without a passing knowledge of British Raj India.)
Yeah I’m very much in agreement. With ‘classic’ works its generally fair to say that the author has philosophical or ideological aims, or is sometimes just exorcising very personal demons, and is using subtext and various abstruse literary devices to articulate them.
Further, classics are often anchored in a time or place that’s foreign to a modern reader, which affects your ability to understand these constructs when they appear. Victorian Aristocratic social graces in an austen novel. Soviet Era policies in the master and the Margherita. Having some understanding of roughly what the author was going for really helps with understanding when you’re really far divorced from these things.
There is a counter argument to be made that books should stand on their own, that the intent of the author is only material insofar as how you the reader understand them unprompted, etc, but for complex historical works or works that deal with a narrow subculture I think most readers are setting themselves up for frustration diving in cold.
Lastly, I’ll also note that training wheels are a thing for a reason. It takes practice to read for subtext, and having some context on challening texts as training wheels helps you get riding quickly. You can remove them later when you feel you understand a genre or author, etc.
I like to pick up the norton critical editions for classics as it has a lot of background info. Letters sent from the author about the book while still writing. Reviews from around the time of publishing. Critical essays across the decades/centuries since the books release. Really puts things into context and the essays help you pick up a lot of the nuance you missed on a first read.
I find that context really helps connect with the material.
I totally agree, with some books. If I’m reading something like historical fiction or fantasy rooted in mythology, I like to understand the context and feel like that understanding makes it more enjoyable. With most other books I try to go in blind— I’ve even stopped reading the back cover blurbs because most of the time I feel like they spoil things for me
I like it for classics or older books more than modern ones. For example, I enjoyed Nathanial Hawthornes works a lot more once I understood his background.
There’s others that knowing context or the authors background made a book I already loved have another layer to examine. I love Tolkien so already loved his stories but rereading them after learning about his history in the war added another interesting viewpoint.
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
A review on Goodreads mentioned how the book was an allegory for Sri Lankan politics and Buddhism. Reading that made me much more interested in the story and has really added an additional layer to the reading experience. I don’t know much about Sri Lanka, so I never would have picked up on that aspect of the story otherwise
Most of the time I just read a book description and read it if it sounds interesting. So I feel like that’s context. Sometimes I read a book because I watched the movie or show…so I know a lot about it before I read it.
And then sometimes I put a book in the library queue because I heard about it from someone or something…then months go by before it’s my turn to check it out and I’ve forgotten all about it or what it is. This happened last week with Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires. I saw it it was ready for me and could t remember even signing up for it haha. What a big surprise lol. Medieval religious fantasy/horror. I love it tho!
depends. when i read The Terror by Dan Simmons for the first time, i deliberately avoided reading anything about the actual event it is based on. after i finished the book, i read up on the actual event, and then i read the book again. it was fascinating both times for different reasons.
generally speaking, i’m not terribly interested in the author’s background. unless it’s something like lionel shriver is actually the mother of five children or something like that, i like to judge a story on its own merits. Although, given an author with an interesting or mysterious life, then i sometimes scan their books for clues. but there are very few if any authors that i’m interested in like that lol
For fiction, I’d say I know very little about most of the authors I’ve read, and I’m fine with that. I think a book should stand on its own, out of context.
It can add depth to a book, to be sure, but I don’t ordinarily go looking for that.
I definitely agree. It’s partly why I love the books so much that I studied at school. I find I enjoy books so much more when I understand them, the authors perspective, their messages, what influenced them..I don’t always do all my research before reading though, but I do like to have a little look up beforehand.
I need to know a good amount about the book before I read, but I don’t need any info about the author. It’s the same for a movie, I generally watch the trailer before I watch the actual movie.
Ok maybe not everyone will agree, but to me a good book has to be good by itself. If, after i’ve read the book, the author context adds to it, then great, but i shouldn’t need that to enjoy the book. Needing context to enjoy the book, to me, is like needing that someone explains the joke to you before telling it.
I’ll put an example: Osomu Dazai’s “**No Longer Human**” it’s one of my favorite of all time, and you can read it without knowing nothing of japan society or Dazai’s life, because of the things the book talks about i think the book speaks *by itself.* After that, knowing Osomu Dazai’s life and society in which he lived you can definitely correlate a lot of things and that it’s definitely interesting. But i already *saw and felt* those things through the book, the book told me itself what it needed to.
edit: This is talking about fiction only.
I like to know the context when it comes to classic novels, or even more recent books like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides because it references many historical events.
I often wikipedia the plot of the books I intend to read and then decide if it’s worth it. It gives me some sort of relieve knowing what will happen and I can take notice and enjoy the other aspect of the book aside from the plot. It is sad though if a book has only plot to offer and not anything else…
Yess agree with this! Knowing the context helps me create an initial knowledge map of let’s say a non-fiction book. While reading the book, I’m able to fill out that knowledge map.