In the same part of another book

[shewhomust]

While I was away, nineweaving asked what we look for in a book.

"What I read for, first of all, is voice. Do I want to hear more of this rant, chant, whisper, Tuvan throat music, kazoo? If not, farewell."

she said, and I was about to leap in with a comment, and say yes, of course, voice is what does it, and then story, and, as lnhammer comments, to find out what happens next, and... Go read the original post, and then read all the comments on it, it's all excellent stuff.

But the more I tried to formulate my own list, the more I began to feel that it doesn't work like that:

For one thing, this is all about what I would like to find in a book. I want voice and imagination and story and vivid use of language and and and. But they don't all have to come in the same book: I'll read crime fiction where a clear narrative leads me through an ingenious plot, even if the language and the characters are pedestrian; I'll read poetry with no narrative at all if the words and the patterns they make do that thing that makes my spine twitch (though I can't read much poetry at one go); I'll read non-fiction if it's telling me about something interesting, even if the telling isn't too thrilling. A book may be way below my ideal, but if it offers me even one fact or one perception or one neat turn of phrase, I'll probably feel that I haven't wasted my time reading it.

At the other end of the spectrum, I feel a bit odd about specifying what I look for in my ideal book. It's as if I were listing the qualities I look for in a friend. I feel as if I were having one of those very blokeish conversations about being a leg man, or a tit man, or only fancying blondes... Which is not only reductive, it's pointless: the people and the books I really love have always come as a surprise.

Ah, perhaps that's the unifying factor: I read to be surprised, to discover something about the world, or the language, or myself that I didn't know.

Meanwhile papersky considers not what, or why, but how we read.

Comments

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

I am with you on this one. A good book can be absolutely anything, as long as it holds my interest. If I were to read nothing but books with a "strong voice," that would limit my reading to mostly first person narratives. If it were just plot, non-fiction would be out. While I love well developed characters, it isn't necessary, either. I read Deus Lo Volt! by Evan S. Connell, a couple of years ago and thought it was a marvelous novel, but their isn't a developed character, to speak of by name, in the entire narrative.
You took the words right out of my mouth when you compared books to friends. I don't try to force my friends to be some idealized vision of mine; I take them for what they are. I have an extremely varied circle of friends, and I wouldn't want them any other way. I feel the same about my library.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

Yep. As she said above, people and books that you love usually come as a surprise.

With people and with books, there are a few things I know I dislike. But delineating the rest just creates unnecessary limits.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

Those two threads pegged my Overthinking Meter. Now I have to have it repaired.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Recalibrated, maybe?

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

We'll see....

[helenraven.livejournal.com]

"In the same part of another book". I like it.

I agreed immediately about not having fixed rules or hierarchies about things that one likes. But thinking it over, I realised that I might have such a hierarchy for things that I dislike. I don't feel strongly about voice as a pleasure, but in the last four cases I can think of in which I rejected a book after two paragraphs, it was because I hated the voice.

Thank you for the postcard, btw. Is that how Basques see themselves, I wonder?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

"In the same part of another book"

Not entirely original, I'm afraid; it's in my mind as a mock Shakespearian stage direction "In the same part of another forest" - but Google can't place it, and neither can I...

Agreed, it's easier to pick out the things which make you put down a book straight away: I think I've told you that for a long time I had a prejudice against books that began in stage-coaches. I can't now remember why, and I have struggled to overcome it.

[helenraven.livejournal.com]

Not entirely original, I'm afraid

No, no, I recognised the references, and appreciated it more because of that.

I think I've told you that for a long time I had a prejudice against books that began in stage-coaches.

No, I don't think you did. I would have remembered that! I think that's a prejudice to be proud of.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

...the people and the books I really love have always come as a surprise. Ah, perhaps that's the unifying factor: I read to be surprised, to discover something about the world, or the language, or myself that I didn't know.

Yes. Yes.

But why do you reread?

Nine

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Oh, fair enough.

To hear that voice again, to spend more time with those people or in that place, to see how differently the story will look now that I know what I know, for the comfort of snuggling into familiar warmth (and maybe pulling the covers up over my head), to see why I so loved this book long ago when I first read it, to see why I so hated it while people whose judgment I trust loved it - and just occasionally because I'm a chapter or more in before I realise that I've read it before (and I hate to abandon a book once I've started it).

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Just to let you know I've been back - briefly - to this question...