Ann About Town: Blind Date with a Book

If you’re a reader, books appear in your life in all kinds of ways. Books come first from parents, and then there are years of “required reading” in school. If you’re a passionate reader, you begin to pick out your own reading material as soon as you can get someone to take you to a library or a book store – you may have to read Moby Dick for American Lit., but once you knock out the required chapters about whale lore, there’s always time to read about time travel, vampires, or byzantine interpersonal relationships.

Even when you decide to read a book because it’s a gift, a loan, or a book club pick, you know what it is before you start. You can see its cover, and maybe check out reviews on Goodreads. Once you’re done with school, you become a mostly autonomous reader, capable of deciding for yourself that you are going to skip a book because it has terrible reviews, or because it’s a crime procedural and you really hate crime procedurals. Basically, you read stuff you like, or you read stuff for work, or you read stuff because your aunt in Wausau will be terribly hurt if you don’t at least try to read the really precious mystery about the woman who knits and has a bunch of cats named after painters.

Schuler Books in Eastwood Towne Center is changing all that. They are issuing a challenge, an invitation to walk on the wild side as a reader, and they’re calling it “Blind Date with a Book” (BDWB). Books are wrapped in plain brown paper, and Schuler staffers write various hints about the book on each cover. In a random sampling, these cryptic snippets included “”vigilantes,” “cyanide suicide,” “a secret love for candy” and “melodramatic.” The mystery tomes offered at Eastwood span all genres including children’s books.

Credit for this brainy pleasure goes largely to employee Dylan Wells, who says she “honestly…got the idea from Pinterest and Tumblr. They were things I had seen other libraries and book stores do and just thought about how we could implement the idea at Schuler Books.” 

Staffer Whitney Sorrow is also a participant in the program. Asked about how the books are selected, Sorrow lists "a number of considerations." For starters, she says "Schuler Books has a fantastic Used Book department, and we limit our choices to our used books so that the price is low enough that people are willing to take a chance on a surprise. We certainly each do pick some of our favorites, some titles we love so much we wish everyone would read them." She particularly enjoys "books that aren't necessarily favorites but lend themselves to fantastic clues" including  Catcher in the Rye, The World According to Garp, and Tropic of Cancer.

"Clue writing," according to Sorrow, "is definitely a state of mind!" She explains that she and other Schuler staffers 'riff off each other' and "even talk to a few of our favorite regular customers about some books for clue material." She and co-worker Krys Tourtois have read many of the selections, and for books that neither has read, they "ask other booksellers at Schuler, or skim through Goodreads or Wikipedia for good clues."

In the course of developing BDWB, Sorrow has learned that "both snark and sex do sell books. She asked "two customers who were purchasing Blind Date copies of Kate Chopin's The Awakening why they chose that one, and they both responded that the clue that sold them was 'empowered 19th century girl sex.'" As for snark, "one example that comes to mind is Madame Bovary. Neither Krys nor I can muster much enthusiasm for Flaubert's classic, and I think our clues reflect that, but in a fun, snarky way. And we've sold a few copies of it. The Bovary clues are, "unfulfilled housewifery," "affairs to cure the boredom," "ennui," and "best takeaway: if you want a happy life, do NOT do as this protagonist does OR what happens when you only read romance novels."

Although Wells has not yet participated in the programs, she “just really liked the idea of picking up a book without knowing the title, cover, author, or anything except for a few small details.” When she's ready, and when you're ready to jump in and have a blind date, Sorrow asks for feedback: "If you like the book you chose, please come back in and tell us that. And if you didn't like the book you chose, or you weren't interested enough to read it, please come back and in and tell us that and why. Or just come on in and ask us for the next book you're going to love." 

Disclosure: the author of this piece is currently reading a BDWB selection labelled “LGBT overtones,” described by the clues “a very female take on comic book superheroes” and “lycanthropy.” It is nothing she would ever have chosen to read. She is, nevertheless, totally absorbed.

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