how we choose what we read

[bluegreen17]

 this is a snippet of a comment i just wrote and i thought it might be a good question/topic for this comm.

 a lot of the time i choose my reading...especially fiction...by how much i like the writing regardless of topic,pretty much. i don't know what that says about me or if other folks do that.

for instance,years ago i read a bunch of books about planes and aviation because i liked richard bach's writing. recently,i read 'reamde' by neal stephenson,which i would say is an action/thriller,even though that's not usually my favorite type of book,because i love how neal stephenson writes.

Comments

[musyc]

I'm like that with Jodi Picoult. I've read everything of hers, regardless of the subject, because I just love the way she writes. She's certainly not the best technical writer, sometimes her prose can be pretty average or clunky, but she can tell a story.

[fred_mouse]

The writing is important for me getting through something, but not critical in the picking of the book. I do tend to pick authors I'm already familiar with, but it turns out that my favourite books of last year were all new-to-me authors.

[hardboiledbaby]

I do tend to gravitate to tried-and-true authors, but enthusiastic recs can lead me to awesome reading material I wouldn't have otherwise considered.

[ironed_orchid]

I find content and plot can keep me happy as long as the prose is adequate, but bad prose can make me put down a book which sounds like it ought to otherwise keep my interest.

So I guess good prose alone is rarely enough to keep me reading content I don't find compelling, but bad prose will actively stop me from discovering new stuff.