What makes you put a book back on the shelf?

[Jamie (K)]

I have noticed that when I'm at a bookstore, there are certain things that make me put a book back on the shelf, or things that stop me from ever looking at a book. Here are a few of them:

-- If I'm looking for business ESL books for my students, and while thumbing through one of them I see a character in it named Nigel, I put that book back and never consider buying it. The presence of a character named Nigel usually indicates to me that the material in the book won't be a good match for the things my students need to know.

-- The American publishing industry knows from its own marketing research that the largest consumers of contemporary artistic fiction are in the Jewish and gay communities. For this reason, they put out a lot of novels with Jewish and gay characters, and quite a lot with gay Jewish characters. Sometimes they even advise authors of novels to make their characters Jewish or gay just to attract more sales. If a novel is a serious treatment of the lives or problems of Jews or gays now or in history, and it is written by someone who should know a lot about them, I might be interested in the novel. However, if I look at the novel and there seems to be no reason at all for the main character to be Jewish or gay, I just think, "Not another one of these books," and I put it back on the shelf.

If I see a political book that has the words "the coming" in the title, I never look at it, because years of experience tells me that books with such titles are almost always predicting horrible catastrophes that never end up happening. These are titles things like, "Oil and the Coming Economic Crash" or "The Coming Youth Revolt" or "The Coming Collapse of the Banking System" or "The Coming Extinction of All Life on Earth". (I'm making these titles up, but they're realistic.

For some reason I will also not look at a novel whose title contains the name of a dead author, painter or composer who is far more important to world culture than the person who wrote the book. These books have titles like, "Eating Fish and Chips with Michelangelo" or "Waiting for Yukio Mishima" or "Reading Shakespeare in Djibouti". (I also made these titles up, but they're also realistic.)

[NinaZara]

I won't think twice to put them back if they read 'Quantum Mechanics' or 'Vibrations' or anything to do with mechanics. I had enough of those in my lectures (only students who had taken 13 to 15 subjects on mechanics would understand how I feel （＊＞＿＜＊)

I read for pleasure and relaxation.
_________________
Try your best and damn the rest.

[FangFang]

Hi,Jamie
I think I might do the same things as you ,but it should happen after 30 years .
Now I try to read all kinds of books , which is a course . Experiences need time. From this point I think I am a collector, not an appreciator.
The most important thing is your sensiblity ,judgement or feelings. Why do we read books? Do you think people can know this world well by reading? You said,
"If a novel is a serious treatment of the lives or problems of Jews or gays now or in history, and it is written by someone who should know a lot about them, I might be interested in the novel. "
Sometimes you can't judge the truth or the serious treatment. Even the writer can't tell it ,either.After all a novel writer is different from a historian . My question is ,how can you know that before showing your interests? And you probably believe most parts of those novels only after reading them. That is what publishers 'd like to see. Leave arguments to readers, so when the public opinions are in the air,whatever right or wrong, you don't know who was the maker,ourselves or those words.
Oh,experiences!