How do you tell if a book is good or not, as you're reading?
I was talking about writing and reading good fiction at a workshop and a woman
asked: "So if you're reading a book and you can't get into it, that means
it's no good?"
Oh, nay, lass. Not necessarily, anyway. Matter of taste and
personal preference must be considered.
A restaurant offers many different dishes. If a dish new to
you was placed before you and you tasted it and didn't care for it, I hope you
wouldn't say it was bad food, unless
it was poorly prepared. And there are some empirical standards by which we
judge food: ice cream should be cold, a steak should be sizzling, a pilaf
should offer some complexity as well as a pleasing blend of flavors, there
shouldn't be a dead fly in anything, and so on.
(I might add that little chickens should be nicely browned.)
Same with writing. You rightly expect to find lively
characters, an engrossing story line, and some measure of style, for starters. If
you read something that contains mistakes of grammar, implausible plotting, and
bland dialogue, then you're justified to call that writing bad, and can
legitimately post a negative review on your favorite online forum.
What if you like adventure tales, but you pick up a book
that turns out to be chick lit? Not to your taste, not your preference. Are you
justified in calling it bad, and warning others away from it? No, not merely on
that basis.
In fiction as in anything, defensible standards can be good
guidance. We only cause damage when we assume our taste should be everybody's
taste.
What do you think? To post your ideas / comments, all of
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