WHAT MAKES A GOOD BOOK GOOD? by Gill Stewart

For the last year or so I’ve been keeping a record of all the books I’ve read, and even of those I’ve started and not finished. I’ve been trying to understand what it is that makes a book a GOOD book – to me – so I’ve chosen the last three books to which I gave the full five stars, and I've tried to discover what qualities they have that set them above the hundred or so others with three or four stars (less than three stars and I don’t carry on).

These books are quite diverse. They are:

·         ‘Falling’ by Julie Cohen, a recently published women’s contemporary fiction novel;

·         ‘The Year Of Living Danishly’ by Helen Russell, an autobiography/political commentary; and

·         ‘Faking It’ by Jennifer Crusie, a classic romantic comedy.

I’ve tried to identify the things that make them such all-round successes for me, and have come up with the following. These qualities are in addition to having attractive characters that the reader is rooting for – I take that as a given!

 Immersive - as a reader you are completely in these books. It's not just the story that carries you forward but the setting and the little details about the main and secondary characters. This is a world you can believe in.

Off-beat – to a greater or lesser extent all the characters are out of the ordinary, which makes them particularly interesting, but the key thing is that they are not caricatured. It’s very easy to caricature eccentricity, but for me that doesn’t make a good read.

Accessible style – the style of writing is not literary, not trying for long words and (even worse) long sentences/paragraphs. It is easy reading. In both the Jennifer Crusie and Helen Russell books, humour is also very much to the fore, which helps.

Page-turners – all are books that make you want to read on, that you regret every time you have to put them down. They are not the heart-in-your-mouth or blood-and-guts type of page-turners, however, as those don’t appeal to me. I don’t like too much tension and I definitely don’t want tragedy. These three were the perfect balance of interest, action and resolution. And there was the added bonus, with the Russell book, that I felt I was learning something new, too!

What qualities do other people feel are essential to a ‘good’ book?