Read the Cover Page

What's Between the Covers?

In This Chapter

• How the novel is structured

• Where to find clues about a book's content

• Examining nonfiction

• A close look at references and sources

• How a book "grabs" you and keeps you interested

How many times have you opened a book—any book—and skipped over the table of contents, the preface, and even the blurb on the back or on the inside dust-jacket flap? We all want to get right to the nitty-gritty, but it might pay to slow down a little and take your time with a book before you plunge in. Before you invest time and money in a book, it's important to know what you're about to read.

There are plenty of readers out there who have countless books on their bookshelves that sit unread because they weren't enjoying them after they brought them home. You should plan to check out the book thoroughly before you buy it to see whether it holds any interest for you. A good examination of a book can prevent this from happening to you and will even leave you some extra space on your bookshelf.

Inspecting Fiction

When you pick up a novel you have never read before, you really have no idea what to expect. But there are clues all over the book that can guide you. For example:

• Title and cover

• Table of contents

• Introduction and preface

• Structure and style

• Appendixes such as a bibliography, glossary, and footnotes or endnotes

When you're first examining a book, one of the first things you'll do is flip the book over and read the blurb on the back or open the book, in the case of most hardcover books, and read the inside flaps of the dust jacket. The back cover or inside flaps usually give you a quick summary of the book without giving the story away. They are written to pique a reader's interest. The back cover may also include a few lines from recent book reviews. But remember the reading material has to call out to you somehow. Reviewers and enticing blurbs aside, what you think is all that matters.

In the following sections, we take a tour of the parts of a book. If you're going to become a good reader, it's best to get acquainted with the basics of what you'll find inside the book.

Let Me Introduce You

When someone introduces you to a friend at a party, he or she will often disclose a few details about the person that will help you grasp who it is you are talking to. For example, you might be introduced to someone thusly: "This is my friend Jill. We were roommates at the University of British Columbia when I studied in Canada for a semester."

This introduction tells you about the relationship between Jill and the other person.

You know that they have maintained a relationship over the years and that Jill might be Canadian. So that information combined with what you already know gives you a starting point to launch a conversation. That's exactly what the introduction of a book can do for your reading experience. It can (and hopefully will) give you some of the information you need to decide whether you want to continue with the book.

Sometimes a book will be introduced by someone other than the author. If the book is in reprint, for example, or if the author is deceased, sometimes a scholar familiar with the writer or an editor who worked on the edition will write the introduction.

For a good analysis of the examination of a novel, let's take a look at some novels both old and new. You may have already read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which case you're one step ahead, but let's take more introductory look at this classic nineteenth-century novel. Published in 1850, it's about a woman accused of adultery in seventeenth-century Boston.

She is humiliated in front of her community by being forced to wear a scarlet letter A on her clothing.

The Scarlet Letter has one of the longest introductions of any piece of fiction, and it is extremely important that you read it to get a full understanding of the novel.

Hawthorne explains what led him to write the novel in the first place. Hawthorne even gave the introduction a title, "The Custom House," which ties his introduction specifically to the content of the book.

Title

As readers, we are always struck by the title of a book—which is often the first clue to what we'll find inside. Hawthorne chose a good title, as well as a very accurate one, because it is also symbolic of what the book is about. So the basics begin with the title. The Scarlet Letter? What could that possibly be about? The title is an attention grabber, which makes you want to know more.

Table of Contents

Part of inspecting a book is to read through the table of contents. This applies to fiction and non-action alike. (Not all novels contain chapter titles. Sometimes chapters are just numbered, so you will not always find a table of contents.) Authors and editors work very hard to make a table of contents as concise and relevant for the reader as possible. In a novel, the chapter titles offer clues as to what you will find inside as well. Take a look at the table of contents of this book. You'll see it is carefully constructed to let the reader know exactly what to expect from the text.

The Scarlet Letter has 24 relatively brief chapters. And this novel does contain a table of contents. If you look it over carefully you may find the chapter headings intriguing.

The first four chapters and their titles are as follows:

Chapter I: "The Prison Door"

Chapter II: "The Market Place"

Chapter III: "The Recognition"

Chapter IV: "The Interview"

Every chapter name represents exactly what you can expect that chapter to be about. It was as if Hawthorne had no time to waste. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, and he said it. In fact, he had the whole book in mind before he ever sat down to write a word. He wrote it in a matter of weeks.

Opening Lines

As a child Trudi Montag thought everyone knew what went on inside others. That was before she understood the power of being different. The agony of being different. And the sin of ranting against an ineffective God. But before that—for years and years before that—she prayed to grow.

—Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River (1994)

Let's look at another way of checking out a book using a different book as an example. These words are the introductory words of a novel called Stones from the River, a book about a German girl who is physically different from the other people in her life and how she struggles with loneliness during the tumultuous times of World War II. Different readers have different feelings about the opening lines of a novel. Amy happens to like it when an author grabs her in the first few sentences, or in the first paragraph. If the author doesn't do this, however, it's not a reason to stop. Other people enjoy a slow buildup to the story—a description of a place or a main character, for example. But the opening words of Stones from the River, combined with the blurb on the back cover, were more than enough for Amy to want to take this book home and stick with it through the next 525 pages.

Here is what it says on the back cover of Stones from the River:

Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyonewho has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he's a girl, to the Jews Trudi harbors in her cellar.

If you are currently a reader, you know that it's instinct to flip the book over and read the back or, in the case of a hardcover, to open the book and read the inside flaps of the dust jacket, where the publisher will often provide a summary of the story. After the title and the cover, of course, the next thing you want to know is what it's all about. Some cover blurbs are better than others, but the blurb combined with the opening lines of a book will often be the elements that make you want to know more.

Sense of Style

If nothing really entices you to want to read the book, read the opening paragraph or even a few paragraphs from the middle of the book to get a sense of the author's style. Is the style something that appeals to your own reading sensibilities? Is the tone something you think you might relate to? Maybe the book is written in a completely different way than what you are familiar with and you feel you're up for a new challenge.

It's important to pay attention to the author's style and tone. This book could be with you for several weeks, and you want to get the most you can out of it. There's no point in reading something that you won't absorb or that will bore you to tears.

Bibliography

A bibliography provides source material for a book and is usually found at the back of a book. In some scholarly works and textbooks, you will find endless pages of bibliographical references. These bibliographies can be invaluable to your own studies.

If you are looking for source material for your own academic work, or just for further reading on the same topic, a great place to find it is in someone else's bibliography. Nonaction is not the only reading material to have a bibliography. You will find that novels that have been read, analyzed, critiqued, and studied by literary scholars (commonly referred to as the classics) often have a bibliography at the end.

In Regina's copy of The Scarlet Letter there is a bibliography. It's not Hawthorne's bibliography, however; it's that of the person who wrote another introduction to her particular edition. This can come in very handy if you are looking to read more about Hawthorne and his work.

Further Reading

Many modern-day books contain appendixes indicating other resources to read for further information. Suppose you have a question about something the author has written and you wonder where you can learn more about that topic. At this point, you can flip to the back again and check out some of the suggested reading material. The suggested reading list will be arranged in a bibliographical format. That means it is in alphabetical order by author's last name.

Another example of an appendix may be a list of questions that may be pertinent within book group settings. Even reprinted books, such as The Scarlet Letter, contain such appendixes.

Reading the extra material provided in any book will guide you to a deeper understanding of how the book was written, why it was written, and what was going on in the author's life and times. In the case of Hawthorne, you will even find out what led him to write this story.

Inspecting Nonfiction

Now let's take a look at some nonfiction, which includes books about science, philosophy, history, biography, autobiography, art, music, and a full range of special interests.

Regina enjoys reading about science and looks for books that will appeal to the regular person—those of us who are not scientists. We're just enthusiasts who read out of curiosity. This kind of reader does not have any kind of specialized training in the subject but wants to know more about it. You can find books like this for the layperson in almost all specialized fields of knowledge.

Format at a Glance

Regina has a stack of books she is getting ready to read. The next science-related book she plans to delve into is The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. Brian Greene is one of the world's leading physicists, and the reason Regina picked up his book is that he promises the reader (on the inside dust-jacket flap) the opportunity to "look at reality in a completely different way." Now, what better offer could any reader ask for? This intrigued Regina, so she immediately turned to the table of contents where she noticed that the book was divided into 5 parts, 15 chapters, author notes, a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading, and an index. The combination of the construction of the book, the back flap, and a glance at the author's style of writing were proof enough that this was an eminently readable book and one not meant for scientific professionals. And the glossary was the icing on the cake because she'll be able to understand certain scientific terminology as she reads along.

This nonfiction book is a good example of a fully developed, well-organized format for a lay reader to pursue the subject of physics.

The index, found in the back of the book, comes in handy because if you want to read about something specific, you just go to the back and look for it. It lists topics, names, and terms in alphabetic order with page numbers so you can easily find what you are looking for. For example, if you want to find out about quarks, you can look it up in the index under the letter Q, go to the indicated pages, and see what the author has to say about that subject matter.

Checking References

Some nonfiction books may also contain footnotes, which are stylistically presented differently than bibliographical material. If footnotes are supplied, they are numbered in the body of the text and then matched with the corresponding number and additional information about a topic, in smaller print at the bottom of the page.

What you will find in the notes is the source of the thought, quote, or information. The notes list the author's first then last name, the title of the book, and the page numbers the author took the information from.

There is no set guideline for how any nonfiction book should be constructed. For example, Regina's copy of A Source Book of Chinese Philosophy, translated by Wing-Tsit Chan (Princeton University, 1963), is 856 pages long. A "source book" is usually very comprehensive piece of literature, and Regina's book certainly fits that description.

It's illustrative of a comprehensive overview that provides information about historical developments in China, comparisons with western humanism, and specifically introduces the reader to Chinese philosophers over a long period of time. In addition to the extensive information contained in the text, the book provides

a foreword, preface, acknowledgments, chronology of Chinese dynasties, and chronology of philosophers. These pages are numbered with Roman numerals— a stylistic indication that this material is separate from the rest of the book. This book is so comprehensive that it even includes a glossary with Chinese words and

their English translations.

One of the things nonfiction books have in common is the inclusion of extra information to help you have a complete and comprehensive reading experience. You don't have to look beyond the binding of the book unless you really want to. Other nonfiction materials such as autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs—books about people’s lives—are often constructed similarly to a piece of fiction.

Grabbing and Holding On

What an author wants more than anything is for the reader to keep on reading. What's the point of writing a book that readers will put down after the first 10 pages? There's no guarantee that this won't happen; after all, you might like one author's style while another reader prefers a different kind of style. The author knows that some people will like the book and others will not. That's one of the beauties of subjectivity.

Each author will appeal to different kinds of people. For example, there are writers who might open their book with 10 pages of description before getting to the actual story. This will appeal to readers who want to have a feel for the atmosphere before they get into the action. Other readers want to get right to the heart of the story and are only interested in description that applies directly to the story line. The important thing for any author is to hold on to one kind of reader and try to lure in others. Authors use strategies involving narrative voice, humor, point of view, and even foreshadowing to keep you reading. You read more about these techniques, later.

Once you find an author whose work you enjoy reading, you will probably look for more of his or her books. You may even find yourself rereading some of your favorites. The more books you read by specific authors, the more able you will be to identify the style of writing you prefer.

The Least You Need to Know

• You can determine whether a book is right for you by examining its various

parts, such as the cover, table of contents, foreword, and introduction.

• Nonfiction (as well as some fiction) often includes extra material to help you

further understand the text.

• Fiction and nonfiction books are formatted differently.

• Authors employ different techniques to grab and hold the reader's attention.