Newcastle University

How do you decide what to read?

I choose ... Usually … If I go into the library, it’s kind of the historical stuff. Or I’ll read something about ... I quite like the twenties and the thirties, about women. I read a lot of books about women and their lifestyle and their careers – or not – and how they were kind of brought up. I choose a book … The cover. I look at the cover and then I read the bit on the back. So I choose it like that. So I suppose the attraction’s the cover, first of all. So I read that. If I look at the back and get a summary of the story, I can usually tell. It’s very different to the reading group, because I read whatever we’re given. But if I was choosing a book myself, I like to look [at a] bit about the review or flick through it a bit, and what the comments are on the back. And that … it kind of guides me in terms of what I read. But I do read book reviews, usually in the paper or a magazine, and if there’s a book, I do kind of go and search them out as well. I always like to know a little bit about what the book is. But again, in the reading group, we just ... I just read what I’m given. So it’s a bit of a split, yes.