Let’s Talk is a meme originally hosted by I Swim For Oceans and now hosted by the team at Smash Attack Reads and A Book Obsession.
It’s guided discussion on anything and everything to do with books and more!
Please drop by Smash Attack Reads or A Book Obsession to find other participants in Let’s Talk!
This week’s topic:
Do you need romance in your books to read them? If not, what else “hooks” you?
I really, really do not need romance in my books. Romance is a bonus – or in some cases it ruins a perfectly good book. Romances can get in the way of plot – unless of course, the book is a romance where the relationship is point of the plot. I don’t need romance, but sometimes I do enjoy it and sometimes I feel like I want to read a book with a bit of romance in it. I’m wary, see, of all those ‘hot’ boys that are actually undesirable being written as romantic instead of the jerkoff douche controlling manipulating dickwads they really are. But have you any idea how hard it is to find YA books with NO romance?
About as hard as it is to find a picture of someone who doesn’t want to be kissed romantically.
The biggest thing that hooks me in a book is beautiful writing. However, this can backfire, as it did in the case of Jay Kristoff’s Stormdancer, which had some of the best descriptions ever. I had absolutely no response to anything that happened in that book, found the whole thing boring and had no interest in any of the characters, but – get this – I would read excerpts of the beautiful writing out to my long-suffering husband (who’d already read it). So first of all, a book needs to have beautiful writing. It also needs to have that X Factor I can’t describe – the unputdownable quality that led me to falling in love with big name successful series like The Hunger Games. I don’t even have to like the main character (Before I Fall), but I do have to be able to read without getting a headache from errors of having my inner editor (did I mention I’m actually trained in editing?) yelling corrections, or re-writing the book in my head. Some books gel and others don’t.
What about you? What kind of things hook you into a book?
Stormdancer was no good, except for the writing? That is sad to hear. That is definitely not enough for me to pick it up, but I might read it one day.
I have a lot of close friends who share my taste and absolutely loved it, and I still struggle to see why they did and I didn’t. Don’t take my word for it, though: if you’re interested, give it a shot. I seem to be in a very small minority on the matter.
I agree with not being able to describe the ‘unputdownable’ quality. You just know it when you start reading – it just is.
I’m a very patient reader, so errors don’t bug me too much. However, if it’s in a book and I ‘know’ the author I have had the urge to ask them if they want me to help them edit their next book. LOL! I’ve restrained so far. I’m not an editor, just a past English major who notices it all… unless I’m writing it of course.
It can be annoying to read something you thinm you can write better. Unfortunately that happens a lot with self-published or vanity published work. Hell, it even happens in traditionally published novels.
Romance is definitely on most YA aimed books. I guess they figure that is on their minds or it makes for an easy-no-brainier conflict.
X factor is a great way to describe that intangible awesomeness that makes you connect with a character, a world, or a plot and just can’t walk away from it.
Yeah, I think it is mostly there for the conflict as well.