I just read a book that took me forever to finish. As it was one of the many, many books I have to read as a World Fantasy Award judge the slowness of the read was a problem. Well aware of the stack of “to be reads” teetering in my room, I kept wanting to move faster. But I couldn’t. Why? It’s not a bad book, the prose is readable, most of the characters are interesting, the setting, based on an African culture, is intriguing and lovingly detailed. Sounds great.
But there was a pronunciation guide at the front of the book.
I am a whole word reader: what this means in practice is that I will note a word without hearing it (trying to learn to read using phonics slowed me down so much when I was a kid that I thought I was developmentally challenged). Even with names with multiple diacritics (signaling intonation, stress, and pronunciation) I sort of note the shape of the word and zip on past. Unless there is a pronunciation guide at the front of the book. For some damned reason, paging past that guide meant that thereafter, every time I encountered a name, I was compelled to page back to the pronunciation guide and see if I was reading the name correctly–even with the names with no diacritics. Nine times out of ten I was correct. The thing is, to get to the story and keep everyone straight, I didn’t need that pronunciation guide. So why is it there?
I generally find maps, lists of characters, explanations of social hierarchies, glossaries, and other world building stuff to be distractions. If they exist, I think they should be at the back of the book (yes, even those pages long lists of characters in Dostoevsky which I think must be provided lest the Western reader get tangled up in patronymics). I also tend to think, in modern fantasy, that these things signal, either that the author has not done a good enough job massaging the world-building into the text, or that the author is so in love with their world-building that they want everyone to see what they’ve created.
I recognize that impulse, believe me, I do. 9/10ths of the worldbuilding work I do when I’m writing second-world fantasy never makes it to the page, and yet it is work I’m proud of, and why can’t I show it off? But I don’t think it helps most books, and in some cases it actively hinders it.
In the case of this book, I think there may have been another reason for all this front matter. The author is writing for a Western audience that may not be (probably isn’t) well versed in her culture. In using a pronunciation guide she’s offering that audience an opportunity to learn her language, to get it right, to hear the names as if she was pronouncing them.
The problem is that, by doing this, the author privileged her desire that the reader get it right, over the reader’s (which is to say my) desire to stay in the story and get pulled along with it.
The presence of the pronunciation guide at the front of the book made it impossible for me not to check each time a name showed up. Why couldn’t I ignore the guide? I am not certain–maybe because for me it turned the book from a story to get involved in into a lesson. I realized the further I went, the more invested I was in sounding out the names–even names I was familiar with. I don’t think that’s what this writer intended.
Don’t get between me and your story, please. I’m distractible enough.
I think I agree with you that all such information should be in the back of the book in case someone wants to look it up. I like to be able to look something up, but I don’t want to feel obligated. And I always feel obligated to read front matter before I start a book.
And I’m so glad someone else besides me finds phonics very unhelpful. I, too, learned to read with the whole word system and fortunately phonics wasn’t in fashion until after I was past elementary school. I read like you do and I don’t like to be pulled out of the story by a question.