How Soon Can You Trust The Author?
Posted 21st June 2017
Category: Chit-Chat Genres: N/A
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I’ve recently discovered something interesting of the sort I expect you can relate to. It’s something I reckon is always there, particularly the more we read, but it’s taken until now for me to have that light bulb moment where it all comes together as a full concept.
I’m finding that I can generally tell within a couple of pages, sometimes sentences, whether I can trust the author I’m currently reading to tell a good, well-written, story.
I expect it comes down to two things, both subjective: 1) I’m increasingly knowledgeable of what, to me, constitutes a good book, and 2) some authors are just too good at pulling you in from the start. The kind of writing and voice is often very similar in a basic way and the feeling oof trust is that lovely feeling of knowing what you’re getting into, where you start a book and it just feels right and you settle down into your seat because you’ve – definitely now – every intention of staying there a few hours.
Sometimes I’m wrong about trust but it’s generally on a sliding scale. The more the initial trust, the more likely the trust wil turn out to be warranted. There’s probably a mathematical formula out there…
A lack of feeling of trust doesn’t mean a book will be bad, often far from it, but it does more often than not to books I think are great but profound. (This is related to my year round up five stars and ‘best of the best’.)
I do believe we all feel this, just in different ways, our preferences creating differences.
What elements of a book cause your ‘I’m going to love this’ feeling and how often do you find books meeting your initial expectations?
June 25, 2017, 8:53 pm
Oh, gosh, this is a good question! It’s pretty rare for me to know immediately that I’m going to love a book, but when I do, it is the BEST feeling. That’s the feeling that I’m perpetually chasing when I try out new books. :p
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June 22, 2017, 1:44 pm
The books I get pulled into are the ones that let me into the action in the middle. Thick as Thieves, the new Megan Whalen Turner, did that beautifully–so well, in fact, that I read the whole book in one sitting.