My book for dummies
Did I really want a reading group guide telling people how to read my novel?

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By Katharine Weber

| I didn't use Cliffs Notes in high school. It never occurred to me because I really loved reading, even "Silas Marner," even "A Ta le of Two Cities," and students bought those summary guides to read them instea d of the actual books. No one I knew used Cliffs Notes as the supplementary stu dy aids they purported to be -- no one I knew would admit to using Cliffs Notes at all. Huge numbers of my contemporaries must have depended on them, however, because you could always tell which books were on the current New York public high school curriculum by the corresponding empty slots in the bookstore racks both for Cliffs Notes and for the Pepsi of study guides, Monarch Notes.

Until a couple of months ago, I had also never paid much attention to readin g group guides, those pamphlets provided by publishers to promote interest in a book by offering background information and suggested topics for discussion. S nobbishly, I had always half-assumed that these guides were a cross between pro motional material from the publisher and a grownup version of Cliffs Notes -- c rib sheets for the somewhat clueless who want to have something deep to say at dinner parties or reading group meetings even if they haven't really gotten all the way through a book or don't quite understand what the book was "about."

But then Reagan Arthur, my editor at Picador USA (paperback publisher of bot h my novels), asked if I would like Picador to print a reading group guide for my second novel, "The Music Lesson," right in the book, after the final page. < /P> Reading groups can give a terrifically important boost to the sales of liter ary novels like mine, no question. The very existence of a reading group guide inside my book -- presumably heralded on the cover -- would encourage groups to select "The Music Lesson," would it not? A reading group guide is a mark of succes s for a contemporary novel. So it might be a good thing. It might be a great th ing.

On the other hand, with a reading group guide bound into the book, a reader who has just read the final words of my novel, instead of putting the book down in a contemplative state of dazzlement (we're talking about an ideal reader he re), would turn the page and be hit by questions and suggested topics for discu ssion.

Perhaps I'm revealing the egomania, grandiosity and self-delusion of the sen sitive artiste when I say this, but I'd like to think my novel speaks for itsel f. Isn't offering extensive explanation just a little insulting to me? Do my re aders really need this somewhat condescending assistance in how to think correc tly about the plot and characters? And not only might a bound-in reading guide be an unfortunate intrusion into the reading experience, I suspected it might a lso offend some potential readers who would simply choose not to purchase the s ort of book into which a reading group guide has been inserted. Call it the Oprah backlash effect.

Sometimes publishers print up separate reading group guides for distribution to bookstores, which often maintain a separate rack just for these guides. (Re ading groups definitely seek them out and often look to this rack as they choos e books for future discussions.) But the added expense meant this wasn't an opt ion for my book, so if I wanted a printed reading group guide, it would have to be bound right in the book. Did I want it or not?

Growing tired of my own ambivalence about this decision, I turned to some fe llow readers. I posted a question about my dilemma in a fortuitously timed conv ersation thread about reading group guides in Salon's Table Talk Books discussion area, which I fr equent. (That discussion thread is no longer extant.)

Several people replied instantly to say they'd be happy to see the bound-in guide, or at least, they wouldn't be especially put off by it. "No one forces you to read it, and some people may find it useful," said one. "The consensus o f my reading group is thumbs-up for the guides ... I don't see them as a crutch -- they're just a tool like any other," chimed in another Table Talk regular. But quite a few people denounced such bound-in guides and said they wouldn't bu y a book that included one.

"I don't like to be led around by the nose -- I'm allergic to being marketed to," was the way one well-read participant put it. "The bound-in presence cons titutes defacement, and I would not buy the book unless I had a compelling reas on," were the emphatic words of another regular whose views I respect. A readin g group guide "tends to act as a signal to me that I don't want to buy or read the book," said yet another.

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