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We go on to the first of our friend’s requests for help. It is a scheme for “book reporting” for college students in literature classes and he premises that an old book to a new reader is news. Of course it is.
Let the student take up a book that’s new to him and read it by himself, afterward writing a report of it to be read to the class. When he comes to write his report he must keep in the forefront of his mind this one thing:
To tell the others accurately enough about that book so that each one of them will know whether or not he wants to read it.
That is all the book reporter ever tries for. No book is intended for everybody, but almost every book is intended for somebody. The problem of the book reporter is to find the reader.
Comparison may help. For instance, those who enjoy Milton’s pastoral poetry will probably enjoy the long poem in Robert Nichols’s Ardours and Endurances. Those who like Thackeray will like Mary S. Watts. Those who like Anna Katharine Green will thank you for sending them to The Moonstone, by one Wilkie Collins.
Most stories depend upon suspense in the action for their main effect. You must not “give away” the story so as to spoil it for the reader. In a mystery story you may state the mystery and appraise the solution or even characterize it—but you mustn’t reveal it.
Tell ’em that Mr. Hergesheimer’s Java Head is an atmospheric marvel, but will disappoint many readers who put action first. Tell ’em that William Allen White writes (often) banally, but so saturates his novel with his own bigheartedness that he makes you laugh and cry. Tell ’em the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as well as you can make it out—and for heaven’s sake ask yourself with every assertion: “Is this a fact or is it my personal opinion?” And a fact, for your purpose, will be an opinion in which a large majority of readers will concur.