Jennifer, from Books Personally, made a statement in her comment on my post about reading a book in a day; it got me thinking. She said:

Some books need more time or more particular moods…

I have realised that on occasion there have been books that I’ve not enjoyed and not understood why that was so until I factored in how I was feeling at the time. An example of this, though extreme, is Austen’s Persuasion. I admit – I dislike the book and find nothing interesting in its contents – but is this a true reflection of how I feel or is it just simply a reflection of the fact that I was ill when I read it? Indeed since reading it I have been conscious to put off reading books when ill, and this was a decision I made long before I realised the possible truth of my feelings towards Persuasion.

I love Pride And Prejudice, but then I read it during a beautiful summer, and as I’m a summer person I was inevitably happy anyway. It would’ve taken a really wretched book to knock me down.

My thinking continued. There will always be a personal bias in our feelings towards a book, that’s unavoidable, we’re all individuals with different backgrounds, education, interests, and values – but how often do we acknowledge that part of our bias is due to the mood we were in when we read it? As much as we might say, “oh but I was having a bad day when I read it” do we truly realise the effect mood has on us? Just like age, “I would’ve liked this book more as a teenager”, our mood charges us as readers. It makes coming to an objective conclusion nigh on impossible.

And we can’t do anything about it, we are always going to have changing moods and we can’t really leave all our reading until we are in one particular mood. That mood would have to conform to so many restrictions in order to be viable that we’d have no time given to reading at all because of the short time available.

Some books absolutely require certain moods or situations, such as books that are set during the winter – it’s rather hard sometimes to fully appreciate a book about snow when you’re sitting in the sunshine. This is a factor that makes publication timing important, for example how many of us in Britain would have liked The Snow Child so much if it hadn’t been released while we were in the midst of a grotty late winter and longing for sheet of snow? The book was everything we want for winter but rarely get – apart from the fantasy, the book was a dream in itself.

Perhaps it depends on whether you’re a winter or summer person, but I’d say it’s easier and more likely for a book to find success if it preaches sunshine whilst you’re huddled in blankets.

And if we read books that are set in the same mood and season we’re currently living, we’re going to find it easier to relate to the story and what the characters are going through. Would I have appreciated Skipping A Beat as much as I did if I hadn’t just had a life-changing experience, as had Michael? And would I have been less impressed by the way E L James finally took a short detour into emotional depth in Fifty Shades Of Grey if I myself hadn’t once been an inexperienced girl dealing with an experienced boy? I didn’t die and come back to life as Michael did, and my boyfriend isn’t a troubled sexual dominant like Christian, but nevertheless there was enough there to make each book strike a chord in some way, for me to “get it”, even if those feelings did not last very long.

This leads on to another point – some books, particularly sad ones, aren’t a good choice of reading material if you’re unhappy, or if you’re happy but susceptible at the time to influence. Reading a sad book when you’re happy can make your day bad, and a sad book will make a bad day worse. Maybe reading a happy book when you are sad can help you feel better, but depending on the reason you are sad, it might just make you angry, jealous, or simply more upset – for example you don’t really want to be reading a book about a person who is having a successful academic career when you’ve just been rejected from your first choice of university.

And in the way explained above, a book can make you go back on yourself in terms of emotional development. If, for example, you’ve been happy with your partner this week but they’ve cheated on you in the past, reading a book that includes an affair will likely put you on your guard and make you less open to loving them. In this particular case you could argue for both cases – the book reminding you that they could hurt you again, and the book being an unnecessary reminder, but the fact would remain that if it weren’t for the book you would have continued feeling happy. A book can change your mood and feelings in such a way that it affects your life. And while books are noted for affecting lives, this sort of affect isn’t what tends to be promoted.

You should never read a sad book when the theme mirrors something you’re going through unless it’s clear that the story will be an aid, like a genuinely positive self-help book. This doesn’t really need an explanation, as it’s something everyone knows, but sometimes we don’t act on it. Unfortunately, of course, there are books where everything seems to be going in one direction before swiftly changing course, so it’s inevitable that sometimes we will have to put a book aside for later. You don’t want to make yourself feel worse or to give you more ideas to worry about.

It may not be a constant issue but we surely do need to watch what we are reading when the world isn’t going our way – more than we need to be careful in the reverse. Reading has the ability to affect us in ways that may not be apparent from the start and we must adapt our routine and choices accordingly. It’s not a particularly awful thing to read a book that isn’t suited to our current mood, when our mood is less extreme, but it certainly helps our comprehension and appreciation to keep a book back for the right time.

Do you put restrictions on what and when you read?