I Know What I Like, and I Like What I Know

The same Salon article I mentioned in my post about recommending books briefly discusses one way to evaluate what makes you enjoy a book/what you look for in books, with the idea that knowing that can help you select other books with those characteristics and thereby improve your ability to choose books you’ll enjoy. The method involves thinking of your favorite books, and then selecting various phrases that apply to why you like that book. Some relate to the prose, others towards having a gripping plot, etc.

I never thought of myself as someone who likes a book because of the prose. Perhaps this is because I’m not a fan of some of the authors most renown for the “language” of their works (cough Austen cough). However, when I think of many of my favorite books from the list, many are ones where I found certain passages or quotes to be incredibly beautiful (The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The House in Paris, and God of Small Things in particular). I don’t mean flowery prose, so much as prose with a certain intensity to it, prose that I have to stop reading because it’s touched me on some level and I need to step back.

When I think of my favorites, I also tend to gravitate to ones that have unique or unusual characters, and even more so ones that have interesting relationships among characters. Wings of the Dove, the only Henry James I’ve liked thus far, stands out because of those interesting relationships; one main strength of The Forsyte Saga is the different relationships between men and women/the different relationships within marriages that it explores. The Idiot and The Robber Bride don’t rank among my favorites per se, but the main reason I liked them was because of the relationships in the stories (and in general I do not mean romantic relationships at all; in The Idiot I mean the relationship between the two leading ladies, and in The Robber Bride I mean the trio’s friendship).

I do think of myself as a plot person, but in general works on the list don’t stand out because of their plots (exceptions to that would be Count of Monte Cristo, noir novels, and anything by Le Carre). World building is also important to me, but like the right shoes or the appropriate bra, it has a bit of a thankless role. You notice if it is off or shoddily done, but when done right you don’t necessarily notice or give it credit.

The next post that I’ll write in this vein will focus on some of the different reasons/ways that a book’s presence on the list is justified in my mind (in a general way, rather than the justification of specific works, which I’ve already undertaken).