T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: Of bibs, inds, acks and deds

How do you read a book? I for my part - thanks to a habit acquired from my days in publishing 40 years ago - start from the index and the bibliography at the back. Then I move on to the acknowledgements or introduction at the front. These four things tell you a lot about the author, at least, if not the book.

As a thumb rule, the longer the bib, the surer you can be that he or she is faking it. I have sometimes counted as many as 300 entries in a 500-page book and, for the life of me, can't imagine the purpose of such a long bib. Maybe it depends on whether or not you have a research assistant who does the donkey work.

It takes a long time to read so many books. If the author has actually read all of them, when did he (or she) get the time to write? It also either means there is nothing original in the book, or that he/she has just browsed and noted down the details for inclusion.

Sometimes the author is merely pre-empting criticism by jealous or lazy peers. If he/she is American, it may even be possible that he/she is trying to avoid being sued.

If you are a regular reader of the New York Review of Books (which I used to be until I got irritated with its worldview) you may have noticed some reviewers tagging on a bib to their reviews. That, you will agree, is a bit much.

Another rule of thumb is that the more brilliant an academic is, and successful, the more he/she tends to agree with my way of assessing the author. Older authors, by the way, tend to have shorter bibs.

One caveat is necessary, however: you must check the entries to see the proportion between books, research papers, and original documents. The more there are of the last category the better the book tends to be.

Then there is the Index which is the most useful part of the book. Some are short, others are long. Long, all-inclusive indexes are better. Short ones are really not of much use, not even as decorations.

We thank thee

In fiction, obviously, there is no index or bib. The acknowledgements give you a peep into the author's real personality. They are usually at the end.

I might be mistaken, but female writers tend not to have acknowledgements. Men perform somewhat better on that score. Wonder why.

Some writers have short acks but many go to great lengths to tell the reader who helped them in the writing of the story. I have found that fiction that relies a lot on facts tends to have longer acks than stories that are pure fiction.

Spy thrillers belong to the former category. To give their books a semblance of verisimilitude, the writers take help from the professionals. They then feel obliged to acknowledge the debt.

The one exception to this rule was perhaps John le Carre. His biography, a huge tome, has just been published.

Most other forms of fiction are of the latter type. But although this has begun to change in recent years, especially in America, few females write spy novels. That perhaps explains why they don't carry acks.

While reading these acks, I never fail to get a little shiver of apprehension. What if the writer has forgotten someone who, while not providing much visible help, was nevertheless an important factor in the shaping of the book?

Relatives, near and distant, can be taken care of in the dedication but what about the friends who helped in a hundred small ways? What if the author omits them because he/she has forgotten who it was that helped them out of the cul-de-sac into which they had strayed?

This happens more often than most people realise and it can cause real misunderstandings.

To you all

The standard dedications are to parents, spouses, children and even pets. No one takes them seriously.

But there are some odd ones too. A recent article, "26 Of The Greatest Book Dedications You Will Ever Read", on www.buzzfeed.com, has some of the funniest dedications in books. For example, E E Cummings dedicated his first work to 14 major publishers who had rejected his book. But my favourite is one by Gillian Flynn who says in her book Dark Places: "What can I say about a man who knows how I think - and still sleeps next to me with the lights off?"

Men are such idiots, no?