Start in the middle ... a surefire way to find a winner? Photograph: Steven Errico/Getty
In his excellent 2006 book, How to Read A Novel: A User's Guide, John Sutherland calculates that, in order to work one's way through Amazon.com's entire collection of half a million novels, one would need 163 lifetimes. That's right - 162 more than any of us will ever get. Clearly, when it comes to reading books, we need to be pretty choosy. But where do we even begin? There is an answer, by the way - and it's 69.
A lot of things happen at the point of 69. (Some of them aren't suitable for inclusion in this blog). Man walked on the moon. Bryan Adams had a summer. Evel Knievel died at the age of 69. And so, ironically enough, did Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian academic to whom we owe a (strictly innocent) relationship to the number 69. His theory of how to choose a book goes like this: first of all, read page 69. If you like it, then chances are you'll like the rest of it too.
It's a simple enough concept, but does it actually work? With that in mind, I vowed to put his theory to the test: five books, my opinion of which is to be formed entirely from page 69 of each. There are problems, however - the main one being that, from one edition to another, the content of a book's page 69 will be entirely different. But the way I see it, if McLuhan's theory is to be trusted at all, it really ought to be strong enough to withstand a few variations here and there. Whether this really is the case, however, remains to be seen...
Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code (Corgi)
Robert Langdon discovers Sauniere's cryptic message in the Church of Saint Sulpice.
My experiment is thrown into doubt at the first hurdle - page 69 turns out to be the start of Chapter 8. The first thing I notice, therefore, is a lot of empty space around the chapter heading. Without much actual text, I feel like I've drawn the short straw. Still, rules are rules. And anyway, it seems quite an exciting page: there's been a murder, and they think it might be something to do with devil worship. On the other hand: "Langdon looked again at the digits, sensing it would take him hours to extract any symbolic meaning. If Sauniere had even intended any." As a forecast of the book, it sounds suspiciously like a whole load of blustering after nothing.
Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote (Vintage Classics)
Don Quixote and a Basque engage in a swordfight, overseen by two travelling ladies.
My next book takes me from one extreme to another. For starters, this looks like some kind of super-size edition of the book. (I'm quite relieved my wrists only have to take the strain of one page.) Furthermore, the print is small, the blocks of text are huge and there's no dialogue. Which is probably, on reflection, a good thing - for I've stumbled on a fantastically graphic page that is soaked in blood, gore, and testosterone. When one man is bleeding from every facial orifice available, what is there to be said? I'm instantly gratified; I did, if I'm honest, feel entirely cheated out of a murder in The Da Vinci Code.
Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood (Virago)
Our narrator discusses the disposal of her last boyfriend, and the acquisition of a new one.
My decision to include this anthology in my test was a particularly difficult one. On the one hand, what with short stories having a concentrated content, I thought I might end up with a really interesting and eventful page. Ultimately, though, I am running the risk of having an ending spoiled. Luckily, however, page 69 only falls about a third of the way through "My Last Duchess". It's sweet, and it's charming, and it reminds me a bit of myself when I was younger - but not much happens. Mind you, it's about being in a relationship when you're a teenager, and not much happens there either. My hope that a short story might yield an action-packed page 69 has proved fruitless. From this I draw my first conclusion: when testing someone else's theory, I shouldn't introduce my own into the mix.
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children (Vintage)
Naseem Aziz - The Reverend Mother - infiltrates the dreams of her daughters.
I am sure I'm on to a winner here. After all, this has just been named the best Booker winner ever, and although the prize isn't rewarding page 69 exclusively, I'm sure the judges took it into account. However, the whole thing is all a bit surreal - fine when you're fully engaged in a 650-page narrative, but for the purposes of this experiment leave me feeling a bit alienated. Which is a shame, because the dreams described on this page all sound as if they are quite revealing. As character-developing exercises go, this one is probably quite effective. If you don't know who the characters are in the first place, however, it doesn't really work.
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights (Wordsworth)
Heathcliff, returning after three years' absence, visits Catherine and Edgar.
There's no doubt about it: the cracks in the page 69 theory are definitely beginning to show. It's partly down to my own lack of foresight - by choosing a Wordsworth edition (known for cramming as many words as possible on to a page, thus keeping the whole thing short and, more importantly, cheap to produce), I've actually opened the book at what appears to be quite a crucial point in the story. My earlier - slightly rash - assertion that this wouldn't matter seems to have been rather premature. Still, without actually having read the novel, it's amazing how closely I can detect the sexual tension between Cathy and Heathcliff. Edgar, clearly a particularly unwelcome third wheel, makes the whole thing even more compellingly unbearable. All in all I'm feeling quite privileged to be present at such an important moment, although a small part of me does wish I'd turned up a bit earlier.
I can't deny having detected a couple of major holes in McLuhan's hypothesis. For one thing, it seems that choosing the right edition does, after all, make a difference - sometimes. Furthermore, it's not always easy to feel an instant connection with a book if you weren't around for the first 68 pages. But despite these flaws, I've decided to stick with my page 69s; as tasters of things to come, I think they've served their purpose pretty well.
Of course, if you're still not convinced, I suggest you carry out a similar experiment. In fact, I'd like to throw this open to the floor: I want everyone reading this to go away, examine a page 69, and come back to report your findings...
