First impressions, tension, humour and beyond
This post reflects my personal experiences and opinions on the relative readability of different books and the reasons they might have succeeded or failed for me. I hope that some aspects ring true for you and your experiences as well!
A Book by its Cover
If only there was some useful cliché… ah well.
I’ve analyzed and sung the praises of a wide variety of books in my posts that few people (if any) would consider based on their cover and title alone. They are valuable and fascinating for their content, rather than their aesthetics or social media hype. After all, the Bible seems to be doing ok despite offering just about as plain a presentation as can be.
External qualities of a book – cover, title, author, length, blurb, online ratings, discussion and so forth – are not necessarily tied to what constitutes a good book, but they can sure as hell increase a good book’s chances of being recognized as such.
I’ve written before about my willingness to put down books I’m not enjoying, and recommended that others do the same. Yet I’ll admit that a book’s presentation can often be the determining factor in how much effort and patience I’m willing to extend to works that I’m struggling with.
I recently tried two quasi-military science fiction books: Artifact Space by Miles Cameron and The King of the Dead by Ariel Viloria. Both novels offer complex worlds, action-filled space adventures and hint at potential fantasy elements; both were also free for me, since I found the former as a paperback on the side of the road and received the latter as an e-book review copy through Netgalley.
Covers of Artifact Space and The King of the Dead
Yet Artifact Space came from an established (Torontonian!) author, featured beautiful cover art including a fun stylized title and had a strong Goodreads presence with over 3,000 ratings averaging to over 4.3/5. The King of the Dead offered none of these draws: Ariel Viloria is either a pseudonym or someone without online presence, the cover only makes me question whether there's something on my screen and I remain the only person to ever review the book on Goodreads.
So which would you be more likely to believe was a good book, without having read a single word of its prose?
(Not a trick question: I enjoyed most of what Artifact Space had to offer, and the author even made some attempts at non-binary characters and Tchaikovsky-like aliens. TKotD was, to be generous, a number of genuinely fun ideas wrapped in 750 pages of rambling mess that I skimmed after slogging through the first chapter.)
Pages per Attempt
As I’ve discussed here previously, my relationship with reading is inexorably tied to my ADHD. Years of difficulty focusing on the simple task of reading have embedded a belief within me that being able to read a book for hours on end is great and that becoming frequently distracted is a bad sign.
I hope this is generally self-evident, though it becomes a little complex when it comes to complex idea- and emotion-rich works, which can require time between sittings to digest properly.
This observation has been lurking in my mind for a while, but came to the fore thanks to the book I’m currently reading: The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland. I’m really enjoying it so far and imagine it will end up somewhere between Circe and The Library at Mount Char in both theme and my opinion of it. Yet I consistently find myself setting it down after only a chapter or two, where lesser books have held my attention for hours on end.
Generated with AI
Reading a number of popular non-speculative fiction over the past year has given me some insights into this. Sharp Objects, The Heart’s Invisible Furies, Demon Copperhead and Where the Crawdads Sing were all easy page-turners for me, despite offering little to nothing in connection to my usual interests.
Whatever factors lead these books to being smoother reading experiences for me have almost certainly played a role in their success and popularity, and I'd argue their categorization as 'good' books.
Linear Storytelling
I believe a telling difference between speculative fiction and generally successful novels is the baseline assumption of how a story should be told. In most of the books I just listed, the narrative follows a single perspective on a linear journey through time; even if there are large skips, progress always moves forward through a single pair of eyes.
The opposite assumption seems to be true in science fiction and fantasy (less so in horror and myth). Whether it stems from Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire or some other work, the average SFF book has (at least) two characters' perspectives narrating its story or jumps between two timelines of a single character.
I'm not here to rip this aspect of the genre to shreds; Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive is a behemoth of intertwined perspectives and timelines which uses converging themes and narratives to deliver what I believe are among the greatest moments in literature.
But for every triumph of convergent storytelling, it feels like there are a hundred books just trying to fulfill expectations. And I think there is a real cost: if not carefully constructed, multiple threads can rip a reader's momentum (if not interest) to shreds. This is my current struggle with The God of Endings, which narrates a single character's past and present, among dozens of other experiences.
Tension
Whether threading one narrative or multiple, tension is the key to holding a reader's attention. Baking tension into narrative is the secret recipe of romances, mysteries and crime thrillers' endless popularity on both page and screen. It's the reason I could read eighteen of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels without breaking a sweat, but his epic fantasy Furies of Calderon took me months.
Demon Copperhead by Katty Huertas (sad how little fan art there is outside SFF!)
Books like Demon Copperhead and The Heart's Invisible Furies supply their tension by building the audience's empathy for their protagonists and their loved ones. We feel for Demon and Cyril as they struggle against forces both external and internal, and we keep reading because we want to see them overcome their obstacles and thrive. The very idea of cutting away to another character's narrative is antithetical to why these stories work.
A Song of Ice and Fire and many other works try to maintain tension and momentum by ending every chapter on a cliff-hanger; entreating the reader to continue by always dangling a carrot 3-5 chapters ahead. It can work, but it can also reveal flaws: many readers will start skipping certain characters completely. And unlike in a Sanderson novel where everything comes together beautifully at the end of each book, you could easily skip certain characters' multi-book stories without missing context for the parts you care about.
A Laugh per Day
I can't recall giving up on a book that genuinely made me laugh. It's a fairly rare reward of reading speculative fiction, but when it comes I find that it soothes many of the frustrations a book might be causing me. Long exposition, slightly uncomfortable topics or perspectives, gaping holes in my suspension of disbelief? When it's funny, it simply doesn't bother me to the same degree.
The Stranger Times and Zoey Ashe are just plain fun series.
If I'm being honest, C.K. McDonnell's The Stranger Times series is rarely coherent enough to build any real tension for me, instead keeping me interested in the next brutally British joke or outlandish take on SFF tropes. Zoey Ashe is the opposite, with never-ending tension that is only heightened by the characters' gallows humour in the face of their dystopia.
Unless I'm fully invested in liking a book, there's often a steady growth of frustration at small details as I read. If it grows too fast, I'll probably set it down. Humour has an incredible way of clearing that frustration entirely, and I think it is incredibly important to storytelling.
About the Author
So there are my observations on what makes books easier and harder to read! Notably I didn't cover vocabulary once, so it's likely others will have their own opinions. Let me know yours!
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