2y ago

What criteria do you use to determine whether a book is worth your time?

Cross-posted to !sciencefiction@lemmy.world

It is not possible to read all the Sci-Fi books out there. So you must have a process for selecting what you do read. Reading a book is an investment in your time. Your time is valuable. No one wants to waste that time reading unworthy books.

I have never codified my criteria. And it has changed and evolved over time. I suspect it will continue to change moving forward, as who I am tomorrow is not who I was yesterday.

What is your criteria to date?

Mine is that it must meet ALL the following criteria, some objective and some subjective.

it must have at least 1,000 reviews
it must have at least 70% 5-star reviews
if after reading about it I get the suspicion that it’s a romance disguised as Sci-Fi, I automatically reject it no matter what
if it’s YA, it really needs to be exceedingly compelling to choose it
Space Opera also needs to be exceedingly compelling
if I get the feeling it’s trying to preach I’ll reject it
if i get the feeling it has (messaging, strong opinions, or political overtones) about today’s societal issues, I probably won’t choose it. Not judging; I primarily read for escapism.

I guess that’s about it. There’s probably more but I just haven’t put that much thought into it yet.

I’m very interested in how y’all decide to choose a book to spend your valuable time reading.

33 comments

I grew up prowling bookstores and you get a general feeling by reading the back cover and the first few pages.
You know what you like, and there will often be quotes from other authors or comparisons to other works.
- I would sometime read a back cover, and sometime I won't. Then when I was reading White Tiger, reached a point in first few chapters (don't remember exactly when) and there was a moment where I went "what!?" Read the back cover and that "what!?" was written in big letters. So I was glad I didn't read the back cover or I wouldn't have gotten that surprise moment. Since then I have strictly stopped reading the back cover. Now I only read it once I have read more than 50% of the novel.
  Same thing in so many other books. It's not like they spoil the ending or anything, but they allude to things that can be a good surprise, sometime even as far as 25-30% of the book.

if hexbear talks about it being propaganda I add it to my list.
It's a good method.
- Looked up the post you linked to, there are many people who say it's not propaganda, and they are pretty highly voted too. But yeah, you can say some people on hexbear thinks it is propaganda.
  And if it works for you, good luck!
  P.S: Remember Rule # 1: Be Nice. 👍

I'm a prose hound. I love prose that manages to feel fluid and poetic while still remaining concise and efficient. This is a fairly high bar in general that most professional writers cannot pass, and I've yet to encounter one who passes it and then somehow manages to write generic garbage.
I don't strictly require it, but its the first thing I look for. I just flip to a random page and start analyzing prose.
- I am probably as far from prose hound as you can get. Any recommendations for some of the best prose?
  
  Prose is pretty individual, since words will carry subtly different connotations and associations from person to person. Also, a pattern that one person finds appealing another may not like so much.
  The objective part you can measure people on is efficiency or conciseness, just how many words does it take them to communicate their whatever.
  Like, analyzing my first paragraph, my choice to use the words pretty, will, connotations and associations both (those are basically synonyms, I only needed one), were all unnecessary. And that whole last sentence was a little clunky. But I'm not a professional writer (I just started two sentences in a row with a conjunction too) and I'm writing in a conversational tone, so I don't really care.
  Regarding who does it best, probably someone like Shakespeare if we're being honest. But my favorite is Ursula K Le Guin. She's my fav author, and the reliable strength of her prose is a big part of it.

If the blurb is intriguing and if there are not (m)any negative reviews that say the book is a waste of time, I’ll try. Intriguing to me is any concept that is a sort of what if scenario that is of interest to me. The more I’m intrigued by the concept, the more I’m likely to ignore bad reviews. That’s it. I’m a simple man, I guess.
Example: I read a couple of Meg books because of the premise. What if there is a layer at the bottom of the ocean that preserves extinct marine life there? The books ended up meh, but that was a neat concept that made you think.
- Meg has books!? I should look them up! Are they any good?
  I agree with your point. For example, for some reason I don't like Stephen King's books, have read a few, just think they would've been much better if they were half as long. Still got one of his book recently (Sleeping Beauties), because I liked the premise. Haven't read it yet though, so not sure if I would actually enjoy it or not.
  
  Yeah there’s like half a dozen books. I only read the first two though. The author Steve Alten has written a lot of off the wall concept books. He has a Loch series which is about the Loch Ness monster. I think there is even a crossover novel with the loch and the meg. There is even a novel about a human given shark genes. Most of the books have intriguing concepts but mediocre writing (I’ve read I think 5 books of his), but his Omega Project is a pure science fiction that was awesome. I can’t even give you a one line story. It’s very complex. That is his first book I listened by chance and all the others were to see if he wrote anything else comparable.
  
  And I love Stephen King. I haven’t read all his books, but he’s my top author. Contrary to what you think, his best books are his longest books. He excels in weaving the mundane background stuff that immerse you deeply into the world. My favorites are It, 11/22/63, the fist 2/3rds of The Stand. Doctor Strange, The Shining, Green Mile, Billy Summers, Pet Sematary, Carrie, Cell are also great. I didn’t like his Institute much, because it felt like that book was about 500 pages too short. Have you checked any of these books out? If not I’d strongly recommend you do.

For me the most important criterion is that the characterisation should be compelling enough to make me care about what happens to the characters, otherwise I DNF. So I generally try to read books by writers known for writing well-fleshed out characters. However, I know that I cannot depend much on other people's reviews because what someone else might consider amazing about a book may not matter to me in the least. So I don't give a lot of attention to number of reviews or star ratings. I have come across several books with thousands of reviews and high ratings, which were definitely not worth it.
- Who do you think are best authors that do good characterisation?
  
  Robin Hobb, Janny Wurts, Lois McMaster Bujold, Steven Erikson and many more in fantasy and scifi. My all time favorite ones are Charlotte Bronte and Emily Bronte.

If the summary speaks to me, I'll look at the free preview from Amazon or wherever. If I like what I see, I get the book. If it's an audiobook, I'll listen to a sample.
I don't care about reviews too much because taste is very individual. I'd rather see for myself, and it only takes a few minutes to tell if I'm going to like something.

I completely ignore ratings on Goodreads. If anything, a higher rating on Goodreads makes me less interested in it. Harry Potter 5 has a 4.5 rating on there, Heart of Darkness has a 3.5 and that's all I need to know.
That being said, if there's a book I'm interested, the reviews there can be helpful. I'll usually read one 5 star review. 2-3 one star reviews, and like 5 three star reviews.
I tend to read a lot of classics so I generally don't need to do a lot of vetting. If something is still relevant after decades/centuries, it's probably worth my time. And honestly, there are very few books I've hated (other than Walden, dear god was that one bad).

I'm mostly enjoyer of Korean novels. I'm not looking at ratings or comments, just reading few chapters (depending on the length ~10 chapters), if plot and writing is good, then I'm going to read it.
- Web novels? Or actual physical ones?
  
  Web novels. I failed to specify that

romance disguised as Sci-Fi
Sadly, that filters out one of my favorite books. I'd call it more of a romance/sci-fi hybrid than "disguised as", but eh, that probably doesn't make a difference. The book is Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik. What I really like about it is the authentic feel of how the characters use computers and other technology. It's refreshing!
OTOH, it is very much a romance/sci-fi crossover.
Myself, I don't have a specific list of criteria. If I hear about something vaguely interesting, I'll put it on hold at the library. I've read a lot of books that took a while to get going but were def worth the investment by time I got halfway through, so I'm fairly generous about "giving the book a chance" through slow starts.

Personally, I don't read as much as I used to, so if I hear rave recommendations (from friends or other other I trust) about something 3+ times I'll try to force myself to go out of my way to read it. I haven't been disappointed yet.

I just want to be entertained and usually this means I will pick a book by the genre I most fancy reading more than anything else. I get a lot of in person recommendations so I tend to stick with those, I know who I can listen to and who to ignore by now from my friendship group.
Generally I don't like reading or supporting work from problematic authors, unless I am going to find their work ironically funny, this was me with the Wind up bird Chronicles. The book is a lovely read but the main character is just awfully written and completely illogical, it's wholly in line with the criticism of the author.

I don't usually care about the reviews. I just read book's Wikipedia page, and see if this is something that looks interesting. Maybe check the "Reception" section if wikipedia page has it, and decide the criticism / praise is something I connect with. If there is no Wikipedia page, check it on LibraryThing, and see the general rating and summary. If it's an author I have read before, it gets extra points, or negative points if I didn't like them. Though if I don't like a book by a writer I just read one or at max two of their most famous / recommended work to see if they are for me, if not, I just black list them.
As for how to choose which books to read about, first, I look up all the books of any author I like, and try to get those. Other than that, I used to get recommendations from reddit before, now I get them from the weekly threads here. Also, if friends recommend me any book, would also look it up.

I don't really have a criteria. If I read the blurb and like it or someone recommends to me I'll probably pick it up. I also have no problem ejecting after a couple chapters if it's not interesting though. The library makes this especially easy because I have not invested any money only a bit of time.

33 comments