Ann Patchett: 'Guess what, folks? We judge books by their covers'

Ann Patchett spends a lot of time on her book tours talking about other people's books. She can't help it: She's a bookseller. It's her job to dole out book recommendations.

And, as she wrote in the Washington Post: "No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do."

So here's a quick reading list from Patchett: "The Stone Diaries" by Carol Shields; "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt; "The Casual Vacancy" by J.K. Rowling (there's not a drop of "Harry Potter" in it); and the whole Neapolitan series by Elena Ferrante. (Patchett always tells customers to buy the first two Ferrante books together, because inevitably you'll finish the first at 2 a.m. and you'll desperately wish you had the next one.)

Patchett joined MPR News host Kerri Miller for Talking Volumes to offer recommendations — but also to talk about writing process, her new novel, "Commonwealth," and why books are nothing without their readers.

"Commonwealth" is a family saga that follows two families over the course of five decades, through marriages, divorces, triumphs, tragedies and regrets. Patchett wrote it, she said, because she saw a hole in her bookstore's inventory.

"I never found a book in my store that portrayed a family that was as complicated as my own, and as the families of my friends," she said. "The big messiness that is modern family isn't something that I was seeing in a book."

"Commonwealth" fills that hole. And though Patchett says it is the most autobiographical book she has ever written, she argued that the author's identity shouldn't play a role in how you read a book. The controversy over the reveal of Elena Ferrante's identity reinforced her theory about that.

"I think that art should certainly be able to rise and fall on its own, and it would be better. This is the thing about literary fiction: I bring half and you bring half," Patchett said. "There are huge holes in my book, in [Ferrante's] book — you need to bring your imagination and your baggage to the novel to fill it out, to create it."

What does play a role in how you experience books, though, is the cover.

"Guess what folks? We judge books by their covers," Patchett laughed. "I own a bookstore, I can't even tell you the extent to which we judge books by the cover."

For the full interview with Ann Patchett at Talking Volumes, use the audio player above.