Could reading doorways be a substitute for genres?

In this bonus episode, we talk about something that didn't come up in the genres episode but should have. It’s a concept called the four reading doorways. Could it be an alternative to genres? Nancy Pearl thinks so! Join as we talk about what the four reading doorways are, learn how they're useful when recommending books to others, and explore how they show up in our own reading.

Sources:

• Pearl, Nancy. “Check It Out with Nancy Pearl: Finding That Next Good Book.”  March 16, 2012. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/nancy-pearl/article/51109-check-it-out-with-nancy-pearl-finding-that-next-good-book.html. 
•  Childs, Tera Lynn. “Nancy Pearl’s Four Doors to Reading.” February 20, 2014. https://teralynnchilds.com/nancy-pearls-four-doors-reading/. 

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Transcript

[All Books Aloud theme music]

Martha: [00:00:00] Hey, Liz. 

Elizabeth: Hi, Martha. 

Martha: How are you doing? 

Elizabeth: I am doing well. I am excited to get together with you today.

This isn't a regular episode. This is a bonus episode, and it's something that, we didn't talk about in the genre episode, but should have. And so thought that it would make a good topic for our first bonus episode because it is basically a possible solution to the problem that we still had at the end of the genre episode, right?

Martha: Yeah, I'm excited to learn more about this and And I'm just curious if we come up with another answer by the end of this bonus episode than we did in the genres episode. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

So, what we're talking about today is something called Reading Doorways, which is something that Nancy Pearl 

Martha: Nancy! 

Elizabeth: Came up with.

Martha: Shout out. 

Elizabeth: Yep, there she is, [00:01:00] right at the beginning of the episode. And really, the whole reason for this episode, because reading doorways are her alternative to genres. I said in the genre episode that she thinks that genres are more of a hindering factor than a helpful factor.

And her alternative is what she calls reading doorways, or sometimes you'll find it on the internet called four doors to reading.

Martha: Why does she call them doorways 

Elizabeth: Nancy calls them doorways because she basically thinks that they open the world of the story to the reader.

I found an interview with her in Publishers Weekly that I'll put in the show notes. And her quote is that she calls these doorways because when we open a book and read the first few pages, and choose to go on. Remember that I, came by my do not finish rule from her. If we choose to go on, we enter the world of that book through those first few pages.

So, basically, she thinks that these reading doorways are how people fall in love with a book. And that it doesn't have to do [00:02:00] with the genre at all, actually, but it has to do with what each reader looks for. In a book, or is drawn to in a story. So, the way that Nancy talks about this to library students is as a way to help them figure out how to do reader's advisory.

Which is when we suggest books to library patrons based on other books that they've enjoyed in the past. And the reason that Nancy says that she thinks that these doorways are so helpful is because a lot of times what , new librarians especially, and library students will default to is that if If you have a reader in front of you that says, you know, I just read a science fiction book where it was set in space and there were aliens, your, your brain immediately goes to other books that are set in space and have aliens, right?

But Nancy's point is that people are not actually looking for the exact same book that they just read or even the exact same plot points, but rather they're looking for a book that will give them the same experience as the book that they enjoyed before. 

Martha: Mm hmm. Or a similar feeling. I love [00:03:00] that description of doorways because it ties together genres and, finishing or not finishing so well.

It's so descriptive and easy to understand when she puts it that way. Like, you pop in a world, you take a look around, do I like it here? Yes or no? If yes, keep reading. If no, shut the door, find another one.

Elizabeth: Yeah, exactly

Martha: I love that. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, if so, go through the doorway and keep reading. Yeah, but if not, close the door.

Martha: Yeah, 

Elizabeth: Exactly. There are four reading doorways. They are story, character, setting, and language. I'm just going to go through all four of them. Story is essentially plot or action. A book with story as its doorway is one that often readers will describe as a page turner, or they can't put it down, or they wanted to figure out what happens next, right?

The thing that draws them into that story, [00:04:00] is the plot points, is the action of the story. So it It's finding out who the kidnapper was, or finding out who the murderer was, right? Or sometimes finding out if the characters get together. It's not genre dependent, but that's the way that the story doorway usually plays out.

Character is, as it sounds, about the characters. The main draw of the stories is the people in them. It can be the protagonist, it can be the villain. But the cast of characters are the one specific character that, go through the journey of the story. That is what the doorway is here.

Nancy says that a book with character as its biggest doorway is a book that the readers feel really connected with the characters. And when the book is over, they feel like they have, lost someone close to them. I actually feel like. When this is done really well, this is when I get a book hangover because I'm like, Oh, I was spending time with this person who I started to feel like was my friend.

Yeah, [00:05:00] and in like a non-I'm losing my mind kind of way. And when I don't have that person to spend time with anymore, it like feels like a loss almost. Mm-hmm.

Martha: or someone who has multiple book boyfriends, probably. 

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm. 

Martha: likes the characters, or I'm thinking of people on social media who post the fan art of their favorite characters, that sort of thing.

So yeah, there's definitely a lot of people who would choose the character doorway. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, exactly. And I am a character doorway reader myself. The third doorway is setting. This is a lot about the world building in a story.

So if it's a book that makes you feel like you're there. Immediately the world feels familiar or it, even if it's unfamiliar, it's a place that you want to spend time in. Nancy says that, readers who, for whom setting is their doorway say things like, I felt like I was there, or when I finished this book, I immediately made plans to go to X, Y, or Z, which is the place that it's set.

 Or, the setting felt like a character. In and [00:06:00] of itself. I would say the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, if anyone has ever read that, if you've ever, I don't know if you've read that Martha.

Martha: Nuh uh, I haven't. 

Elizabeth: It is so good and it is, I actually think that it is a lot of character as well. I don't know what the biggest doorway would be for Rebecca, but the setting of Rebecca feels like a character in the book.

 It exerts a will of its own, almost, on the characters. And so that, I would say that that setting for Rebecca is a big one. and then Language is the fourth one, which is about, as it sounds, the words of the book, right? The grammar, the style, these books tend to fall into the literary genre, but , they cross over, the doorways all cross over all the different genres, that's the point of them.

But when you're reading a language book, you want to savor every word, you want to slow down, sometimes you reread sentences or passages because it's just so beautiful. Nancy says that for books that have language as the main doorway. Sometimes [00:07:00] readers will say, I don't even know what the book is about, or, nothing happens in the book, but I just, the language is so beautiful that I just loved it anyway, or something like that.

Martha: Mm hmm. And it's probably a book that takes longer to read. It's not one that you're going to read quickly. Because you have to digest it.

Elizabeth: Yeah, exactly. You're not going to tear through it like you would tear through a book where story is the main doorway. If language is the main doorway, yeah, it's going to take you longer to read because you're savoring the language and you're rereading it, or it's a little bit more difficult to read.

It takes more of a thought process. In this interview that Nancy gave in 2012, she had this quote that I just thought was so great because it gets back to exactly what we were grappling with in the genre episode. I just can't believe I didn't think of this when we were doing the genre episode. She says, "My dream is to attach to every entry in a library or a bookstore. Or in their online catalog, a pie chart that indicates the biggest doorways of every work of fiction or narrative [00:08:00] nonfiction in the bookstore. So you have an immediate visual representation of the book's major elements.

In order to help you find your next good book, the trick is to find a pie chart that closely matches a book that you loved." 

Martha: Hmm. 

Elizabeth: So. 

Martha: I love that.

Elizabeth: So she does. 

Martha: I want to live in that world.

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Well, if Nancy gets her way, which I think the world would be a better place if we enacted all of her strategies for reading.

 So that quote indicates that it's not that books can't have all four of those elements. They can, and most of them do. But she does say, at least the way that she taught it to me when I was in graduate school, that books have, one doorway that's the biggest one, right? The main doorway.

And like I was saying with Rebecca, it's, the characters are a huge part of that book, but I would say that the setting is the biggest doorway. If I'm talking to a reader that, setting is their biggest thing, then I might recommend Rebecca, whereas another book that has a really good setting and it's really compelling, but it's not the biggest doorway, I [00:09:00] might not.

 So, it's not that there's no. flexibility with this, it's not like a book only has one or the other, but they have one main doorway. 

Martha: My instinct is telling me that if there's no standout doorway in a book, it's probably not a very good book. If you're trying to fit all the elements in, then you're not doing any of them very well.

And I could be off, but that's just my sense. If I came across a book where all the doorways seemed equal, it might be a little sus. 

Elizabeth: Maybe, yeah, maybe. Or it's the best book ever written. 

Martha: Yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth: Because they're all, all the doorways are completely equally represented.

Martha: An epic book, yeah. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. So I feel like it's maybe useful to talk about some examples of books that make it clear the doorway, philosophy.

 The way that I even remembered the reading doorways, theory in the first place is that after the genre episode. After we recorded it, at least, [00:10:00] I read this book called How to Lose the Time War by Amal L. Mohtar. And it's a science fiction book. It is set in the very far future. It's very much not the type of book that I usually read. Like I can see your brow furrowing. 

Martha: Yeah. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: You're like, why in the world did you read this book? The reason that I read it is because there was a tweet about it that went viral on Twitter by this account that I don't even know how I ended up seeing this tweet.

I think it's just because it went so viral. There were tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets. And everyone in the book world was talking about this frickin book because not only because it went viral, but also because people in the book world are always searching for ways to promote books and when a book goes viral, everyone in the industry is like, okay, how did that happen? We need to figure out how to recreate it. 

Martha: Yeah, definitely. 

Elizabeth: So I heard about this book so much that I was like, I'm just going to read this book. And actually I just said that it's by Amal L. [00:11:00] Mohtar, but it's actually by two authors.

So it's by her and, another author named Max Gladstone. They wrote it together. And, I liked the book and I was like, I don't really understand why I like this book. It doesn't seem like the type of thing that I normally would. But then I realized as I was talking to you about it, that it's because it is very much a character driven story.

 You could hear when I was describing it that I don't even really have a great sense of what was happening in the book. I know what happened plot wise. But. The, world is never really explained, you're just kind of dumped into it through the eyes of these two characters who are writing letters back and forth to one another, in a transgressive way because they're on opposite sides of a war that's happening, but the world is never explained.

Why they're at war is never explained. What type of beings they are is never really explained, but I still just really love this book because you are getting immediately and stay [00:12:00] throughout the book, deep into the minds of these two characters. And that's why I liked it, because it was a character doorway, even though it was sci fi, which generally speaking, tends to be more in the setting doorway, right?

Because in the beginning of most sci fi and fantasy books, you have a lot of world building to, get you into that. But this didn't have that at all. It just started with the characters. So that's an example of how it can align with genre. A lot of sci fi books, align with a certain doorway.

But it doesn't have to. They very much cross between genres. 

Martha: Yeah, that's really cool. I'm curious if I would like it or not. I think that... Not understanding the world would drive me crazy. I would want to know the context because I am a huge fantasy reader and I love the world building. That's part of what I love about fantasy.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's pretty short. So you could just give it a try and don't finish it if you're not getting it. 

Martha: Yeah. Shut the door if I don't get into it.[00:13:00] 

Elizabeth: I think that some people, and it sounds like maybe this is the case with you, I think that some people are split between different doorways, they really enjoy two of them or whatever.

I am very, heavily weighted towards character doorway. All of the books I can think of that I've loved in my life have been mainly character driven books. 

Martha: Mm hmm. 

Elizabeth: But then after I read How to Lose the Time War, I was talking to you about it, we had a conversation about two books that you had read, where you sort of realized that you were having a similar thought process about them, right?

Martha: Yeah, Scott, my boyfriend, and I went on a walk, and I was talking to him about a couple of the books I was reading. One was The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose, and the other one was Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. And I was explaining to him how, I liked both of the books, but The Perfect Marriage, I was just flying through.

I think I read it in like two or three days, and if you haven't read it, it's a [00:14:00] thriller. And to me, it was just really easy to read. Whereas Tom Lake, was taking me a little bit longer, and I kind of described it as being not as easy to read, or I wasn't reading it as quickly, and Scott isn't Really a reader, so he asked me, you know, what's the difference?

Why is one book easier to read than another? He's probably thinking if you know how to read, you know how to read. Why would one be easier than another, right? So I was describing to him how the prose of Tom Lake is very eloquent and thought provoking and it makes you stop and reflect on, your own life and the past.

 Whereas in The Perfect Marriage, it's mostly dialogue or an inner monologue, and you are just trying to get to the bottom of what happened, who committed the crime. So it's kind of, I would say story versus language, [00:15:00] is that what you would say if we're gonna talk about it in doorways? 

Elizabeth: Yeah, that's what it sounds like.

I haven't read either of them, but based on the way you're talking about them, that would be my professional interpretation of the doorways that you're describing. 

Martha: And now I'm thinking after I had that conversation with Scott, I was telling you about our conversation and you said, oh, that sounds like doorways.

And I had kind of wished that I knew more about doorways at that time and I could have explained it a little bit. Well, not better necessarily, but in a different way to him that might be easier to understand. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, I love this theory, it's why we're recording this because I was like, we can't go on without talking about doorways after we did the genres episode.

Yeah, it just gives you, it gives this structure and this language for talking about a phenomenon that is kind of hard to put into words otherwise, and so while you were talking, a couple things occurred to me, which is that you loved Tom Lake, right?

It's not like you didn't like Tom Lake or that because it, took longer to read that you weren't enjoying it. And [00:16:00] so that led me to think about the fact that it's not that one is better than the other. You liked both of those books, but the reading experience was so different because they're different types of books and they have different doorways, the writing has to be different.

And so we talk about this in lots of episodes, so I don't need to get on this soapbox, but I just feel like it's worth remembering that, books are not better or worse than each other. There's no moralizing that needs to happen. And it's very much from a writer's perspective, not that plot heavy, story driven books are badly written.

To the contrary, it's actually very difficult to write in such a way that your writing sort of disappears in the mind of the reader and they can just fly through the story. That takes a lot of talent and a lot of time to do, and I think that people think it's so easy because all of the bestsellers just do it, but I'm here to tell you that it's not.

It's just as hard. If not harder, but definitely just as hard as [00:17:00] writing, you know, that sort of eloquent flow y. flowery prose that you get in a lot of literary novels. It's just different types of writing. 

Martha: The funny thing about that, what you were saying about how it's actually difficult to write a story like that, is the way that I found that book, and I'm sure a lot of other people found The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose, was on TikTok, because the author was trolling this man named Scott, who was emailing her his critiques on how much he hated the story, how Jeneva should get out of literature, you know, all of these things.

And she replied to him a couple times, and then it just turned into a series where she, you know, kind of gave it back to him. It was hilarious. I loved it. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: Frickin hilarious. I know you sent it to me. I was cackling as both a writer and a woman and a reader. I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

Different Scott, by the way. Yeah. Different 

Martha: Scott. Not my Scott. He was not, he was not trolling Jeneva Rose. [00:18:00] Thankfully. And then the other thing I just wanted to mention briefly is that although the reading experience, is very different between The Perfect Marriage and Tom Lake, and like you said, it doesn't mean I didn't like Tom Lake because it was harder to read or took me longer.

In fact, I do think that , the story of Tom Lake, will probably stick with me longer and ultimately will be more memorable. Than The Perfect Marriage, if that makes sense, so Just different 

Elizabeth: Yeah, I mean, I think it does make sense, especially because the reading experience like you were describing It slows you down.

It makes you think about it more and that is the type of thing that you remember Mm hmm, because you had to spend more time on it, which again is not like good or value judgment. It's just different. Yeah. So I think that it also would be interesting for listeners who maybe like different genres or different [00:19:00] types of stories than the ones we normally talk about to hear what some of our picks are that would cross over different genres because of this doorway theory. I thought of a few. Like I said, I'm definitely a character reader.

I've talked before on the podcast about the Murder Mystery Club by Robert Thorogood, which I really, really, really loved. And if you're a character reader, I think you would love that book. And then similarly, I've loved several science fiction books. Like, I just talked about, How to Lose the Time War, but The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I would say is one of my all time favorite books, which whenever I share that with someone, they're like, So confused because most of the books that I read are , romance, women's fiction and then there's the road, but God, that book, oh, it really has stayed with me and I don't want to read it again because it is kind of difficult to read.

It's a heavy book, but I would put that in my top five books for sure. And it's very much not a genre that I normally read, but [00:20:00] because of the fact that you just feel so strongly for the characters in that book. You don't even get their names. but you know them so completely as humans through reading their struggles in this post apocalyptic world.

And then Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood I also really love. That was another sci fi. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. That was one that I read in a Nancy Pearl class. And I did not have high hopes for liking it because it's a science fiction, there's space, aliens, it's just not my bag, but I love that book.

And I still think about it to this day. I also really love P. D. James thrillers, mysteries. And I don't know if you ever read Martha, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. 

Martha: I haven't. 

Elizabeth: I really liked that book. It's been billed as a little bit of like a copycat of Gone Girl, but I don't think that about it at all.

I actually like it better than I liked Gone Girl, although I also liked Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Because that also was very character driven, [00:21:00] especially the first half of it, I feel like. So what are some examples from your reading that you feel like would be crossovers into different genres that you don't normally talk about? 

Martha: Well, The Perfect Marriage, like I already mentioned by Jeneva Rose, it's a thriller, Slash murder mystery. Dune by Frank Herbert. That's a sci fi book that I really love. Their Lost Daughters, which we've talked about before on the podcast, by Joy Ellis, we both listened to that because Liz has a crush on the narrator of the audiobook. Yeah. So, yes, so that brought us to listening to Their Lost Daughters by Joy Ellis, which is also a thriller crime mystery. Magpie by Elizabeth Day.

I love Elizabeth Day. We both share a love for Elizabeth Day. We love How to Fail. We love Best Friend Therapy. And when Magpie came out, I just knew I had [00:22:00] to read it, even though. Again, it's a thriller, 

Elizabeth: I also loved that book, and it is another book that has a twist in the middle that will leave you, completely just thrown for a loop and breathless, the same way that Fingersmith by Sarah Waters that I think I talked to you about on another episode.

Martha: Yes, 

yes. And I love a good twist, and maybe that's part of what I loved about Magpie. Totally not what I was expecting at all. I did not predict the twist. So, that was a great one. And then Pieces of Her by Karen Slaughter. That's a really famous thriller that I really got into. 

So I think based on the fact that most of mine are thrillers, it seems that story is a big doorway for me. And I would say setting and character, it's hard to narrow it down, because I love fantasy. So definitely story based on those ones I just described, [00:23:00] and then maybe setting or character coming in number two.

 Another thing that I wanted to elaborate a little bit, when we talked about tropes as shorthand to describe elements of a book, and how a lot of people use that on social media.

And I think that the quote unquote, I'll say, problem with tropes is that some people see them in a negative light because they can be kind of cliches or predictable, and I don't see them negatively, and neither does Elizabeth, I know that we Both think that using it as a shorthand is helpful. It helps a lot of people find their next book. However, there is that group of people who does kind of see them negatively. So doorways can be a great alternative for tropes because, A, there's no negative connotation with a doorway, and it's broader, I think that it can encourage people to read a [00:24:00] wider variety of books that they wouldn't normally read, whereas I think tropes can be more narrow and it can easily keep you within the genre that you normally gravitate to.

 For example, the enemies to lovers trope. If you just go for enemies to lovers trope, I think it's more likely that you're going to stay in that romance genre than find a great work of literary fiction or I mean, it's possible that there's an enemies to lovers element, but I think you know what I'm, you get what I'm getting at.

Elizabeth: I mean, I think that there, there certainly are literary novels in sci fi that have enemies to lovers, but I think that what you're saying is right, because I don't think that people that read in those genres would talk about it that way. I think that tropes are very genre specific, which is. I think that's why we ended the genre episode, with not really feeling like we could get rid of genres because tropes just didn't feel like they were taking the place of that.

Whereas I think that [00:25:00] doorways does solve that problem for us. And you know, Nancy solved it decades ago when she came up with this theory. 

Martha: Yeah, I think based on our conversation today, I would say. Let's get rid of genres. Let's enact reading doorways. I love the pie chart idea. I wish every bookstore and library had this right now.

So thanks, Nancy, because I'm totally changing my answer. 

Elizabeth: Amazing. I love it. I have to get in touch with Nancy and tell her to listen to all of our fawning about her in our podcast. All right, well, that's it for this bonus episode. Hopefully you enjoyed this and we'll be back with a regular episode next week.

Martha: Read on my friends.