[AnotherCat]

I have an acid test for novels which helps leave me in the position of never getting into reading one which becomes a chore to read (I use the same test for movies as well). For me they have to stand the "test of time", which means that by the time they come into my orbit 99.999% of them are relegated to being remaindered or pulped long ago. The other 0.001% will be around, still in print, in 10 years time and so likely worth reading.

I ignore all recent reviews of and prizes won by novels, they seeming to be mostly hysteria, exaggerated academian, or advertising driven, and ignore as well the opinions of the chattering classes caught up in their mass hysterical endeavours to outdo each other in their analysis of books they imagine to be well dressed but which actually have no clothes on.

Applying such a test does not mean that one is a literary snob, as the chattering classes will rush to claim, as light fiction of proven appeal and of whatever mass market roots will normally still be in print after 10 years (much for many more decades longer than that).