You Never Read a Book Alone

The Invisible Library Every Reader Carries

We all know the basic transaction between a writer and a reader. The writer channels whatever muse she needs to create a story, drawing on her life experiences and imagination, and put it out into the world. The reader takes the book, reads it, and brings all of his worldly experiences and ideas to the story. The reader completes the story in his mind. 

When we’re young and learning to read, we have the joy of discovering something for the first time. Can you recall the first mystery you read? Or science fiction and fantasy? Romance? There’s something magical with discovery. You can sometimes feel your mind literally expanding.

As we grown up and keep reading, all that has come before is stored in our long-term memory and compounds on each subsequent book, story, movie, or TV show. You often lose the power of a first-time read (unless it’s a new-to-you genre or author) but you gain a new story to pile on top of all the other stories you’ve consumed in your life.

The older we get, the more stories we consume, and now that we have the internet and its micro-stories in the form of reels and small videos, the stories are coming at us even faster. 

When you pick up a book of a certain genre and you see the cover art, read the description, learn about the author if you aren’t familiar with them, you naturally bring certain things and tropes. If it’s a rom-com, you know there’s going to be a meet-cute and you can judge and compare the current meet-cute with all the others you know. Ditto for quirky detectives, starship captains, and sword-wielding knights.

I thought of these things this week as I’m reading the new novel by my friend, David. He’s an accomplished writer (I’ve mentioned him before) and he recently completed his first space opera. I’m having a blast reading it and will certainly let you know when it is published.

Sometimes, you can tell where a writer throws in a little wink at the reader. At one point, one character is asked about a location in the novel. The character responds: “A wretched hive of thieves, pirates, and generally unpleasant people.” Now, when I read that—and likely when you read it, too—I started continuing the famous line from Star Wars: “A wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Loved it.

But there was another scene that proves that we readers do things authors never imagined. Two characters are reunited after years apart, and Character One walks up to Character Two and belts him across the face. The next moment, as Character One approaches, Character Two flinches before being embraced by a giant bear hug. 

Now, this being a space opera, I instantly thought of that scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Han Solo sees Lando Calrissian again after a long time. While there were no fisticuffs, there were flinches before Lando wraps Han in a giant hug. When I brought it up to David, he was happily surprised. Why? Because that movie scene was nowhere near the front of his memory when he wrote the scene.

Isn’t that cool? 

So, Fellow Readers, since we bring all that’s come before to every story we consume, do you find that you like that? Or are you the kind of reader who tries their darnedest to come to a new story as clean as possible? The closest I get to the latter is when the other three guys of my science fiction book club pick a book. I never read the description. I just download the audiobook and push play. I call it reading into the dark and it’s one of my favorite things. It’s a way to check in some of the baggage and soar into a story.