What elements go into a good book for you?

Sympathetic characters. Believable circumstances.

I have no patience for billionaires and secks gods and stupid women.

I remember Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years -- Delia really bugged me. And I hated the tidy ending.

I like books with interesting characters and well-constructed plots and prose that do not include psycho-sexual violence or misused and/or misspelled words.

On 6/21/2014 ennui1 said:

Sympathetic characters. Believable circumstances.

I have no patience for billionaires and secks gods and stupid women.

I remember Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years -- Delia really bugged me. And I hated the tidy ending.

I remember that book and I don't like books where people can just fall into circumstances where they can live unrealistically with a job where they make no money. They just find a room and can walk to work etc..

Ah, Ladder of Years: loved that book!

I need books that don't insult my intelligence. I want good character development and realistic plot lines. I really enjoy books where I have learned something new by the time I get to the end. I love historical fiction as long as the "fiction" doesn't mess with the real people and events in the story.

I love books where I feel I am really in the place where they are situated. Atmosphere is very important. Example: just read a book based in Louisiana (a state I have never been to) but I could feel the heat and humidity, smell the magnolias and Mississippi River, and taste the crawfish and grits in the author's words.

I really appreciate authors who have a magical way with words. Books where I highlight and underline phrases and think "WOW, I wish I could be that articulate".

On 6/24/2014 Linders Back said:

I need books that don't insult my intelligence. I want good character development and realistic plot lines. I really enjoy books where I have learned something new by the time I get to the end. I love historical fiction as long as the "fiction" doesn't mess with the real people and events in the story.

I love books where I feel I am really in the place where they are situated. Atmosphere is very important. Example: just read a book based in Louisiana (a state I have never been to) but I could feel the heat and humidity, smell the magnolias and Mississippi River, and taste the crawfish and grits in the author's words.

I really appreciate authors who have a magical way with words. Books where I highlight and underline phrases and think "WOW, I wish I could be that articulate".

Linders Back, I was wondering how to answer this question (because there was no simple answer for me) and you have put it perfectly. Great post.

For me as a reader, I prefer books that consistently move the story along. There's a stretch in Victor Hugo's book "Les Miserables" where he goes off on a tangent relating a story of how the bricks in a building are a certain color because the clay was stained by the blood of the men killed in a battle above it many years earlier. That description (to me anyway) goes on forever and by the time you get back to the story of Jean Valjean, I'm like "Wait a minute? Who is this Jean Valjean guy and what's he doing in this war story?" Too much description tends to take me out of a story.

Much of my first novel took place in an old man's kitchen. I knew that kitchen so well that I could easily write five hundred pages describing it. I mentally lived in that kitchen for years while writing that novel, but does the reader need five hundred pages describing the kitchen in every detail? No. So what do they need? That's the question that drives writers crazy. (Well, crazier.)

I don't have anything definite because I really can't tell if I'll like a book till I finish it but I requested and received an ARC of Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen and a big reason why I requested it is because I like the book's publisher Atria/Emily Bestler. I don't know if she is considered the editor or what but I think she choses good books.