How to Read Your Book

Question from Robin:
On on of my favorite topics. Had a chance to do my a.m. + So.Cal Orgn. Gardening reading… adore your book but creates attention deficit disorder. Without fail I start looking up one thing and become totally distracted and have to go back and look up my original page number… quit comical, well almost. What to do about this?

Answer from Pat:
You are not the first person who has told me this! I have heard from other readers that they get involved in reading a second section of my book while following a link to another page and then get so interested with something totally different on that page that they forget to finish up the first. My suggestion is if you are looking up a specific topic in the book, finish reading that before going to the links. I stick in the page references in the most logical spots and sometimes they help people find the item they are really looking for. Cross references are hugely important in a book such as this one that is such an encyclopedia of information, but arranged month-by-month so I can’t finish each topic right there. If I did the book would be redundant. It still has some redundancies but that is because I learn from giving talks how people still don’t understand a specific topic so I figure I need to explain it twice in different ways. I did this with wisteria pruning, for example. I’ve got at least two places where I describe it in detail, so if folks didn’t do it right back then, they can straighten it now later in the year.

Best plan for reading my book that has worked for most folks through the years is to just make habit of reading one chapter a month, the chapter for the month we are in. If people do that eventually they will know just about everything there is to know about local gardening, or enough so the rest of it will come pretty naturally. And then eventually some other year read the introduction. So many people have said to me, “Golly, I finallly read the part of your book called ‘What You Need to Know First” and learned so much.” (And this is sometimes years after they bought the book.) Others start right out by reading the beginning. I think what pleases me most is that folks feel as if I am talking to them and also that they know me even if they’ve never met me. I hear that all the time.

Thanks so much for writing!