Friday Why: What makes books absorbing vs. good?

May 8, 2009 — Emily

I started thinking about this because I recently read Libba Bray’s THE SWEET FAR THING, and THE EARTH, MY BUTT, AND OTHER BIG ROUND THINGS by Carolyn Mackler. And my reaction to both was that they were not very good…but they were extremely absorbing. The kind of reading where I totally get lost in a book and forget what’s going on around me, and where I don’t want to put it down. But they weren’t very good. It seems contradictory, but that’s my reaction, and as I think about it there are a fair number of Teen books that I feel that way about, whereas absorbing and good almost always go hand in hand for me with both younger kids’ books and adult books.  So why?  What is the distinction between what makes a book good and what makes it absorbing?  And why do Teen books seem to lend themselves to being absorbing-but-not-good?

About these ads
Posted in Bray, Libba, Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, The, Flawed does not preclude Interesting, Friday "Why?"/Random Book Questions, Gemma Doyle series, Mackler, Carolyn. Tags: , , . 12 Comments »

12 Responses to “Friday Why: What makes books absorbing vs. good?”

  1. susan Says:
    May 8, 2009 at 10:45 am

    Maybe teen books are in absorbing in that many are plot driven. You have to keep reading to move forward with the conflict. The focus is what happens next versus the why and who. I find many of these reads unsatisfying. At the same time, I get why they are appealing.

    With children books, a great deal of attention is paid to the visuals and vocabulary because we know children process information differently. The art and sounds in children’s books are strong elements. I think the reader is engaged on more levels simultaneously with children’s books. For the child there may not be conscious awareness of all the stimuli but the older reader appreciates the various elements that make it a good read. And with children, I think they like the whole journey and not fixated on how the book ends.

  2. T.Y. Says:
    May 8, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    By ‘good,’ do you mean prose wise? As in, the writing is not spectacular but the storytelling more than makes up for it? YA books target a plot-driven audience. When I was a teen, the last thing I wanted when I read anything outside of school, was to analyze the language, the author’s beautiful prose, etc… I get enough of that in English class. The teen books I picked up were whooping good reads, but the language was more or less functional.

  3. susan Says:
    May 8, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    T.Y., I hear you- I don’t think teens want to analyze language but who says teens don’t appreciate work that is well-written and that the work has to be plot-driven?

    YA isn’t just for teens anymore and I think many writers are casting a wider net. As an adult do you still only read YA works that are plot-driven? I didn’t read a lot of these when I was younger and they aren’t among my favorites now.

  4. Elizabeth Says:
    May 8, 2009 at 8:05 pm

    Susan raises a good question: do we find the same things in teen books absorbing now that we did when we were actually teens? I find I’m more hesitant to spend much time reading books I’m not fully enjoying today, which I think has to do with being more aware of my busy-ness.

    And a lot of trash I found absorbing as a kid I don’t think I would find absorbing now; like, would Sweet Valley books have any appeal for me if they weren’t so wrapped up in my own nostalgia? Whereas I always knew Twilight was trash, but it didn’t stop me for one moment…

  5. Kelly Says:
    May 8, 2009 at 10:33 pm

    Such an interesting question! I don’t know that I have anything useful to add, but I can say that I’ve experienced the same thing. Twilight, as Elizabeth said, is a great example of absorbing but not good. It wasn’t necessarily the writing not being “good”. I didn’t even like the main character all that much!

    It’s kind of like when you get hooked on a crappy TV show. You know it’s dumb, but you want to watch to find out what happens.

  6. Kelly Says:
    May 8, 2009 at 10:36 pm

    p.s. I just tweeted this so many we’ll get more thoughts that way!

  7. jessmonster Says:
    May 9, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    I think I often have the same reaction to plot-driven books, where the characterization and world-building just isn’t on par with the plotting. I did enjoy the characters in Libba Bray’s books, but I was completely bored with the fantasy world.

  8. Elizabeth Says:
    May 9, 2009 at 8:23 pm

    That’s really true, Jess. I found the Gemma Doyle series quite absorbing, but was never remotely engaged with the world. Actually, I was confused by what its rules were half the time, and it was usually entirely too obvious who was ‘secretly’ evil.

  9. Heather Zundel Says:
    May 10, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    Oooh, I’m loving this discussion. I really hope you guys will go more into it. Can you think of any YA books that were both good AND absorbing? I personally love Shannon Hale’s work. Not only is the characterization and plotting well done, her language has a lyric quality that is quite beautiful. I also love Garth Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy for the same reason. Good writing + good plot and characters = pure awesomeness.

  10. Elizabeth Says:
    May 11, 2009 at 9:36 am

    Heather: I hope we can all think of books that were good and absorbing! I bet this is where the subjective tastes will really come into play, though; like, my first thought was Octavian Nothing, but Emily’s been really struggling to get through it, I believe.

  11. Emily Says:
    May 11, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    I’m glad this post generated so much discussion. When I said good vs. absorbing, I wasn’t so much thinking of whether a book has classic literature prose, I was more thinking of books that I can get lost in to the point of being completely unaware of what’s happening around me, and/or books I can’t stand to put down, BUT, that I’m sort of thinking to myself as I go along and/or when I finish that I don’t buy the characters, or the world doesn’t come together, or it feels superficial. I think the point about plot-driven books makes sense. I also think it might be the melodrama in a lot of teen books – I get into it, but I still know its melodramatic.

    Most books that I like (for all age groups) I think are both absorbing and good. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re deep, profound works of literature, but they grab and hold my interest, I enjoy the experience of reading them, and I find them thought-provoking, or feel the characters and their world ring true.

    If a book sort of seems objectively good but I can’t get into it, I usually put it down – that’s what happened to me with Octavian Nothing. I just didn’t enjoy reading it, couldn’t get into it. I got half-way through and gave up (and I only got that far because Elizabeth was raving about it and so I really wanted to see what was so good about it).

  12. Review: The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things - YAnnabe Says:
    January 9, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    [...] Adult Rating: 3/5 Why I Read It: One blogger I follow, Jessica, loved this book, while another, Emily, didn’t think it was all that great. I wanted to see where I’d [...]


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

«

»
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

%d bloggers like this: