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threemonkeysIt seems almost pointless to say it, but the title of a book is very important. It is the big writing on a cover that attracts people to look at the book if they don't know who the author is, which is to say it is a key selling point. They tend to be genre related - a book called Hard Case is likely to be a crime book (even if written by Dan Simmons). I have to say though that a lot of "modern literature" titles seems to get titles that are suggestive of science fiction or fantasy these days (The Tesseract anybody?) Perhaps it is a symptom of the relative strengths of these genres. (btw - how to annoy a literary snob - call modern lit a "genre" - it really bugs them).
Thus when I saw a book called The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich, the contradiction of the title interested me. Of course I saw this in the secondhand shop in Petone which means it was shelved as SF when in fact it really belonged in pop science, history or possibly even biography. That was enough to make me buy it.
It is a book about a personal quest to find out more about Copernicus' De Revolutionibus - the book which famously puts forward the heliocentric view of the solar system. The book is supposed to be well known for never actually having been read - the basic thesis being spread by word of mouth rather than actually being read. Gingerich does a big survey of surviving titles in order to prove otherwise by analysing margin notes written in them.
Boring? Yes, pretty much unless you are deeply interested in that type of literary archaeology, you need the author to really tell the story of the chase well. It takes a rare talent to convey the thrill of discovery. Luckily, the book is intercut with the story of Copernicus and other big figures of the time (Brahe, Galileo etc). That part I found genuinely interesting. I found myself skipping past the stories of yet another first edition in yet another library to read the historical observations and how the results of all that sleuthing influenced the view of that history. Perhaps if somebody does a book describing Gingerich's book they could call it The Book that was Half Read. I don't think it would sell though.
Thus when I saw a book called The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich, the contradiction of the title interested me. Of course I saw this in the secondhand shop in Petone which means it was shelved as SF when in fact it really belonged in pop science, history or possibly even biography. That was enough to make me buy it.
It is a book about a personal quest to find out more about Copernicus' De Revolutionibus - the book which famously puts forward the heliocentric view of the solar system. The book is supposed to be well known for never actually having been read - the basic thesis being spread by word of mouth rather than actually being read. Gingerich does a big survey of surviving titles in order to prove otherwise by analysing margin notes written in them.
Boring? Yes, pretty much unless you are deeply interested in that type of literary archaeology, you need the author to really tell the story of the chase well. It takes a rare talent to convey the thrill of discovery. Luckily, the book is intercut with the story of Copernicus and other big figures of the time (Brahe, Galileo etc). That part I found genuinely interesting. I found myself skipping past the stories of yet another first edition in yet another library to read the historical observations and how the results of all that sleuthing influenced the view of that history. Perhaps if somebody does a book describing Gingerich's book they could call it The Book that was Half Read. I don't think it would sell though.