topic Re: What elements go into a good book for you? in Community Chat

What elements go into a good book for you?

qualitygal — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 14:15:18 GMT

I'm starting a Belva Plain book today. I got to wondering what helps you decide on whether or not you like a book? For me it's the characters. I don't like some books if they are too complicated with places or names.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

ennui1 — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 20:05:55 GMT

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.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

Marsha2003 — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 21:28:16 GMT

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.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

BornToShop — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 22:54:50 GMT

I love a book that grabs me on page 1 & before I know it, I am on page 100!! When I start counting the number of pages until the next chapter, I am done...especially by page 40. The deal maker for me is a shocking hook or a totally different ending than what I thought. I tend to love authors who do not write a lot, but write superb novels. I refuse to read bestselling authors who turn out a book a week & also co-write with another author. There is a ton of aspiring authors who just need someone to read their novel; hoping it spreads like wildfire. I love discovering new talent that has me opining for more.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

lovescats — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 18:05:30 GMT

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..

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

insomniac — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 19:07:42 GMT

Ah, Ladder of Years: loved that book!

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

Linders Back — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 23:17:03 GMT

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".

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

smoky22 — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 05:06:25 GMT

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.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

gardenman — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 13:35:10 GMT

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.)

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

lovescats — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 16:18:03 GMT

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.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

insomniac — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 16:25:44 GMT

I enjoy books with somewhat quirky characters who are not stereotypes. But more is needed.

Right now I'm struggling to finish The Cat's Table (by the man who wrote that dreadful English Patient book) for a meeting this afternoon. The characters in this book are quirky, but I have almost no interest in anything they're doing.

I'd thought I was done with that author before, but now I know I am.

P.S. I LOVED Les Miserables: the extraordinary details enriched my pleasure.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

brewhaha — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 22:37:40 GMT

The genre. Mystery, suspense & crime thrillers keeps my interest in a book.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

nagrom — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 01:50:44 GMT

I love a book rich in character development that weaves all the details in a web that comes together at the end. For me it's Toni Morrison. I read the Song of Solomon and fell in love with all Ms. Morrison's books.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

LilacTree — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 22:40:54 GMT

Writing and well formed characters. The storyline has to be interesting, but not necessarily suspenseful. I cannot read a poorly written book, which is why I could not read "Fifty Shades of Gray." I read the first part of the book that Amazon forwarded to me on my Kindle, and never ordered the book because the writing was hideous.

I also read a couple of Belva Plain's books many years ago and enjoyed them. But mostly, I have read the classics, like the Bronte sisters' "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights, " In fact I read Jane Eyre to my mom every day when she was dying, as that was her favorite book, and it will always hold a special place in my heart.

I read two of Ayn Rand's books, "We the Living" and "Atlas Shrugged" while on the beach before I got married, I read "Dr. Zhivago," and many of James Michener's books, including his best "Hawaii," I loved his style, as he brought the land he was writing about up from prehistoric days. I read "War and Peace" on a dare because no one else I knew could get through it. "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham (sp?) was the best written, but saddest book I ever read.

More recently I had read almost all of John Grisham's books because they are a fast read, not because he is a particularly good writer and once he began to plagiarize his own novels, I lost interest, as it was clear he was writing just to make money.

Over the years, I've probably read a thousand books, many of which these days are nonfiction, philosophically-based books. I've read self help books, books about the beginnings of the universe which fascinate me. I love biographies, and my favorite is "Brando" by Peter Manzo. What a complicated and almost psychotic man Brando was. A genius on the one hand, which he could not have cared less about (acting), and a total nut on the other. He had a very dissatisfied and tragic life.

I could go on and on, but I have probably bored you to death already.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

FlowershopGirl — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 15:43:22 GMT

What LindersBack wrote really expresses what I like, as well as what nagrom and Ford said as well.

Its important that the characters be interesting and fleshed out. I just read "The Winter People" and while the story itself was slowly chilling and creepy, the characters were so one-dimensional, at best, that the book was an epic failure to me. I loved the story but the writer definitely needed to work on her characters. I think many authors, like Grisham, Robin Cook, too many to mention here, now write with a screenplay in mind and sadly, the characters and often the story line suffer.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

MoJoV — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 20:40:44 GMT

I can't bear books that give so much information just because they can. Just the facts, I love bare bones writing. Clean,brief sentences get me every time.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

Sooner — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 18:41:43 GMT

The writing. The pictures, thoughts and feelings the words convey. I don't care so much about the plot. I want something that is beautifully worded, uses language in ways I would never have thought of to evoke emotions and put you in a place, time and situation. I want a book that makes me think, and maybe even one that might not answer all the questions or lay out the entire story with a conclusion that ties up all loose ends.

Re: What elements go into a good book for you?

sunala — Sun, 14 Sep 2014 05:03:40 GMT

On 6/22/2014 insomniac said:
Ah, Ladder of Years: loved that book!

insomniac, ME TOO!!