What criteria do you use to determine whether a book is worth your time?
What criteria do you use to determine whether a book is worth your time?
Cross-posted to !sciencefiction@lemmy.world
It is not possible to read all the Sci-Fi books out there. So you must have a process for selecting what you do read. Reading a book is an investment in your time. Your time is valuable. No one wants to waste that time reading unworthy books.
I have never codified my criteria. And it has changed and evolved over time. I suspect it will continue to change moving forward, as who I am tomorrow is not who I was yesterday.
What is your criteria to date?
Mine is that it must meet ALL the following criteria, some objective and some subjective.
- it must have at least 1,000 reviews
- it must have at least 70% 5-star reviews
- if after reading about it I get the suspicion that it’s a romance disguised as Sci-Fi, I automatically reject it no matter what
- if it’s YA, it really needs to be exceedingly compelling to choose it
- Space Opera also needs to be exceedingly compelling
- if I get the feeling it’s trying to preach I’ll reject it
- if i get the feeling it has (messaging, strong opinions, or political overtones) about today’s societal issues, I probably won’t choose it. Not judging; I primarily read for escapism.
I guess that’s about it. There’s probably more but I just haven’t put that much thought into it yet.
I’m very interested in how y’all decide to choose a book to spend your valuable time reading.
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I'm a prose hound. I love prose that manages to feel fluid and poetic while still remaining concise and efficient. This is a fairly high bar in general that most professional writers cannot pass, and I've yet to encounter one who passes it and then somehow manages to write generic garbage.
I don't strictly require it, but its the first thing I look for. I just flip to a random page and start analyzing prose.
I am probably as far from prose hound as you can get. Any recommendations for some of the best prose?
Prose is pretty individual, since words will carry subtly different connotations and associations from person to person. Also, a pattern that one person finds appealing another may not like so much.
The objective part you can measure people on is efficiency or conciseness, just how many words does it take them to communicate their whatever.
Like, analyzing my first paragraph, my choice to use the words pretty, will, connotations and associations both (those are basically synonyms, I only needed one), were all unnecessary. And that whole last sentence was a little clunky. But I'm not a professional writer (I just started two sentences in a row with a conjunction too) and I'm writing in a conversational tone, so I don't really care.
Regarding who does it best, probably someone like Shakespeare if we're being honest. But my favorite is Ursula K Le Guin. She's my fav author, and the reliable strength of her prose is a big part of it.
Ahan, thanks for the input.