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Originally Posted by Vivian
It's not always a bad thing to have to put in effort while reading a book. What if you're reading a mystery? You may have to put in effort to keep all the clues in mind and work out the different possibilities before the reveal. A lot of people enjoy this sort of effort.
If you're reading a science fiction book, you may be dumped into a strange, familiar world and have to work out, from whatever information woven in with the story, what the heck's going on. Sometimes it's not easy but it's still worth it--to fans of science fiction.
On the other hand, if the author has been unclear in her description, forcing you to struggle more than you should have to in order to get a picture of the scene and characters and what's going on, that's the author's failing. I find this with a lot of literary fiction. The author is too busy making everything sound poetic to be clear. This is something I find unbearable, and I wonder why literary fiction is supposed to be so great and a higher art form than genre fiction when most of it is so bad.
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I'm almost exclusively a mystery book reader. I love puzzling it out. But if I need to put forth effort to be
interested, then it's not a good book to me. Effort to puzzle something out because I am ALREADY interested is not what I mean here. I mean, you shouldn't have to work to become interested in the story. The story should already reach out and grab you. If you have to work to piece things together because it's that kind of a story, that's perfectly fine.
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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
I think your point about the "effort" part is overbroad. Some reading requires and rewards effort; some things are inherently complex and are best enjoyed that way. Likewise, some writing is more interesting because it is complex (see my "Lolita" example above). Also, people have many different experiences, and what may require effort for a HS dropout to read may not require effort for you to read.
I think that Anthony Trollope is a much better writer than David Weber. But Weber requires less effort to read.
Note however, that effort alone is no sign of quality - sometimes the author makes you work to little point, or simply due to his unclear writing. And that's bad, I agree.
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Effort and rewards are required in, say, a book written in a different language or a book written a few hundreds years ago when there were different sayings and ways to word things. But what I meant was that a good book shouldn't require me to TRY to like it or at least TRY to find it interesting.
Hum. Perhaps I was a little unclear with the word "effort" and how I was applying it.