Wrapped Up in Books

Maybe it's just me, but when the train is full and I have to stand up, I like to peruse the novels other passengers are reading. I'm aware that it's a pretty obnoxious thing to do, which is why I try to be as unobtrusive as possible so much so that I doubt that the other passengers even know I'm doing it. I find it cool because I get free previews. If a few pages of a book seem good, I may consider keeping an eye out for it in a library or a bookstore or something.

Whenever I do this, the one thing I look for that tells me whether a book has a chance of being good are the names the author gives his characters. This may sound like a non sequitur--and it probably is one--but it's very important to me. Here's an example. I was in a bookstore a few years ago and I saw some books from the "Left Behind" series of semi-religious novels. At the time, I'd yet to have heard about said series, so I went so far as to pick a book up and read the blurb. It seemed interesting enough, like a modern interpretation of the book of the Revelation to St. John (which is really freaky, by the way), so I opened it to the first page. After reading the first character name that came up, Rayford Steele, I put the book right back on the shelf. I mean, come on, man, any book whose characters have names like Rayford Steele has to be a crock of shit.

Unless in parody, it's very important that the characters in a book I read have no shitty names like Rayford Steele or WASPy ones like first names that begin with T and end with R, such as Trevor or Tucker or Taylor, you know, names that your neighbors whom you suspect may be klansmen might have. God, I don't know, maybe it works. After all, more than three years down the line, I still have that awful fucking Rayford Steele name etched onto my brain. The only good book I've come across with that sort of name that I liked is The Catcher in the Rye.

So should anyone reading this decide to write a book, please, give your characters normal names like Elizabeth Bennett or Arthur Dent. If you must give them "weird" ones, make them cool like Yossarian or Stiva Oblonsky or Zaphod Beeblebrox.