What makes a good book?

What makes a good book? There is more than one answer that someone can give to this question and so I am going to give mine. I will not talk about preferences, everyone has his own. There are those who enjoy mystery, adventure, fiction, paranormal, those who like romance, historical, non-fiction and many-many more. I want to talk about the things that anyone expects from a book.

A good story.

The first thing we do when we see a book is to read the description which tells us a bit about the story we are going to learn. This is our first encounter with the book and I believe an important one. We want to be excited, curious and even thrilled and that’s a reason to make us read it. So, an interesting description is crucial but it will not be a surprise if at the end it wasn’t a good book. Yes, there is the case that an astonishing description may lead us to a book that we wouldn’t choose for many reasons.

An interesting start.

The second thing that I do when I have a book on my hands, is to read a few opening lines. This is a way to take a peek at the way the author writes and a hint about how the story begins. This may be a prologue or a preface or even the beginning of the story. Whatever is the case it must be something that we will remember.

Well written.

A huge presupposition is for the book to be well written. This takes a lot of discussion and I know that there are many experienced people who can explain it better than me. From my experience though, even if it is a little one, and form my aspect as a reader, I have to admit that a well written book is the most important thing. But…this doesn’t mean that the author must use some difficult technique or something. Of course when you have studied and you have spent years analyzing, reading and taking advices from experienced people, you see things more clearly than someone who just writes. Writing is not easy but I believe people can do it, and I don’t speak of those who force themselves to do it, because there are those too. I am speaking about people who writing comes from their souls and they will do mistakes and everything will not be perfect to an experienced eye, but those people can create a good book too. The reader doesn’t know what the author has studied; he only enjoys the story and travels along with the characters. If a book can do this to you, then I don’t think that there is anything more we can tell.  So, my advice is to anyone who writes because he likes it, because he is passionate with it, is…write! I do the same thing. I write and I don’t know if it will lead me anywhere but I love to write and I just wouldn’t be myself if I stopped for any reason.

Of course there are a million more that we can tell about a good book but those three are the top on my list. Which are yours? Feel free to tell me.

 xoxo

A.