What makes a book worth reading?

[Apache]

I have to like it.
Apache

[LoudMouthLove]

Wow. These are all really great examples and reasons. Thank you so much.
I know everyone has their own preferences when it comes to books, but it actually seems deep down we are quite similar. Something that engages the mind, attaches you to the characters, and takes you on journey (through whatever type of story or narrative you enjoy).
I, myself, enjoy the warm and fuzzy... well, I enjoy an epic story that twists and turns but ends well enough. I have enough stress in my own life. I like books that aren't like life . But I completely understand a more realistic point of view.
This discussion makes me want to read more types of books.

[rdfry]

The plot has to be interesting and the characters actions have to be plausible.

[Red Falcon]

A good plot that flows nicely and characters that feel real , love 'em or hate 'em.

[4691mls]

Characters I am interested in enough to want to find out what happens to them. No gaping plot holes.

[Lemurion]

A book is worth reading if it is written in such a way as to make me want to keep reading it after I start, and more importantly return to it after I've had to stop reading.

I know a good book when it keeps me reading....

[xendula]

The first page or two need to pull me in. I could force myself to read on, but life is just too short.

I circle around the various fantasy and scifi genres, very much into dystopian, fantasy and urban fantasy with strong heroines at the moment. I found something out about myself in the past few months: I seem to prefer books written by female writers, because they seem to be more inclined to dream up tough as nails heroines and sprinkle the story with a little romance.

The whole men are from Mars thing, I guess. I'd love to be in the head of a man for a day....

[Sydney's Mom]

The poll doesn't have enough choices. Depends on my mood. I have gone years reading just mysteries and true crime. Then someone gave me a sack (literally) of romance books, and I remembered why I liked those when I was 18. Right now, I am reading the Walking Dead graphic novels.

[Lemurion]

Really, for me it's all about the space battles... really... j/k.

(Actually, that's movies, Superheroes, Sword fights, or Space battles required. I might like comedies if they were actually funny instead of painfully embarrassing, but that's whole other topic.)

[xendula]

Originally Posted by Todd Young

I used to be pretty easy to please when it came to reading. I loved science fiction when I was younger, and went through a stage of reading the classics.

Last year (because I'm gay) I decided to read nothing but gay-themed novels. Well, that's proven to be something of a disaster. All my life I've been reading about the fortunes and misfortunes of straight people as they fell into and out of love, and being gay, I've been translating it all through my own frame of reference.

Now, having read so much good gay literature over the past year, I can't get enough of it. And the problem is that I like "good" writing. There's plenty of very average gay novels around, my own included, but I want to read something better than average, and I've just about reached the bottom of the barrel.

Is there a good amount of gay literature across the various genres? I like a bit of a love interest in my books, so I imagine it would be less fullfilling if the romance were between two women, since I could probably not relate as well.

[crich70]

Most of the replies are independent of genre. That's as it should be as all genre's need much the same things to be well written. Your poll should have been with things like plausible plot, well defined characters and proper pacing instead of genre's. With a big "all of the above" as the last choice on the poll.

[caleb72]

For me it's a complex algebraic soup that's difficult to predict.

For one novel I have to see a + b + c + d, for another I only need a + b, and others it might be a case of (a^2 - (b/4 + x))/y and no c or d in sight.

For example plausibility might be a major concern for me in one book, but may be totally irrelevant in another. Characters I can relate to might be vital in one but in another can fill me with complete apathy (or even disgust) and still remain successful.

Even the sophistication of the writing is not a guaranteed quality for me. Sometimes, simple writing just works better.

Bad grammar and a mass of typos will nearly never impress, but that's more a basic requirement rather than part of the magic.

Occasionally even a book not following its own internal logic isn't enough to create a

Any rule I try to make is likely to be broken with the very next book I open. But there are a few universals I guess:

If after I've finished I continue to think about and remember the book, that's a good thing. Sometimes this can last for months. Some of the books I read in high school still linger after over 20 years (Crime and Punishment, Lord of the Flies, The Outsider, Of Mine and Men etc..)

If I'm hankering to get back to the book when interrupted by life, that's a pretty good sign.

If I want to talk about the book with others that's positive (unless it's to explain how terrible it was)

If I start purchasing the same book for other people as a gift, that's a bit of an endorsement.

Of course these are all "what" rather than "why", but that's the only thing I can be sure of.

[Rizla]

An empathetic link between reader and character and a good story. The rest is gravy.

[Turtle91]

This definitely needed to be a multi-choice poll. I like Sci-Fi and Fantasy and a little tasteful Romance. Of course it has to be entertaining. It doesn't need to be Highbrow literature as long as it tells a good story.

Sort of like Sparkly Vampires!

Sci-Fi: the whole cells transforming thing after you get bit...
Romance: the whole teen love thing... Although if you average their ages it should be geriatric love...
Fantasy: duh, there's really no such thing as werewolves.....

Go Team Alice!!!

[elemenoP]

I have a "formula" in my head, but I am having a hard time figuring out how to express it, so I will give an example: Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. It is about a very extreme family of circus freaks. Much of the plot is fantastic (as in not realistic), and yet I completely *believed* the characters. Yes, if I were the least-freakish child of circus freaks, I WOULD cry myself to sleep at night for being "too normal." I found this completely consistent (and interesting) within the world the author set up.

So I guess my formula is: take an unbelievable setting, and make it believable by populating it with believable characters. And yet, I checked "realistic fiction" in the poll, that is my main reading. I think the formula can apply there too. I recently read and loved "American Wife" which is a fiction book based on the life of Laura Bush. I knew almost nothing about Laura Bush going into the book. I found the character that Curtis Sittenfeld created in her book to be entirely believable in her choices. So now the formula starts with a niche world rather than an unbelievable world. Of course, the setting and characters must be interesting to me, too, but this idea of "do I believe the characters?" goes a long way toward whether I love the book or not.

eP