Too many books to choose from…
The number of books in bookstores (especially used bookstores) overwhelms me.
Where to start? Which ones are good? Which ones are a waste of time?
I’ve gone book shopping armed with my Goodreads app to benchmark good books (at least 4 out of 5 stars, please). But then I found one of my favorite books at 3.54 stars because readers didn’t get enough fantasy tropes. I would have missed out on a book that shaped my understanding of fantasy, and I’d have missed out on Ursula K. Le Guin entirely.
I’ve tried reading the first page or two, but that’s only one step better than judging a book by its cover, right? (Which I have also tried—I just can never know if I was right.)
Other times, I’ve found a curated list of best books in a genre or on a topic and searched for those books, but what happens when I’ve read all of those?
I’ve also relied on friend’s suggestions, but that’s an inconsistent source (especially if you read faster than your friends).
I thought on this problem a lot, and I kept returning to the question at the heart of this problem: what separates a good book from a bad book?
How to judge literary value?
We could base our judgments of “good” and “bad” on our personal taste, but I’ve made enough mistakes to know I’m fallible. You’d agree quickly if you saw some of the stories I’ve written. I’ve buried those so deep they’ll be lucky to remember that sunshine exists.
We could base our judgments on the Western Canon, but that’s myopic and determined by power structures with their own motivations (*shudder*) even if there are a lot of good books in the ol’ WC.
What about basing it on what’s popular? I’ve seen enough trailers for Transformers and watched enough election results to know that the majority is hardly ever right.
The best I’d come up with was books that stand the test of time, but then I had to wait at least 20 years before I read a book. . . .
And then there’s the doubt. Isn’t separating books into “good” and “bad” elitist? Am I *gasp* “yucking someone else’s yum”?
I think most of us worry about stepping on toes: I can’t watch a BookTube video without the creator saying, “And that’s just my opinion,” or, “And I’m not saying they’re wrong,” fifty times. Or we go in the other direction and all we want to do is step on toes to get more attention. But I want to suggest that criticizing books or sorting “good” from “bad” can be done as an act of love.
When I was eight, I loved The Hardy Boys, but after ten books, I started to realize that each book followed the same outline. Chet always had a goofy hobby. Frank and Joe always got captured. There was always a fist fight. The mystery was always tied up neatly. There was nothing challenging or deep about those books even for a child (as fun as they were). And I got nothing out of those books—each one forgotten as soon as I finished it. (For what it’s worth, my wife tells me the Nancy Drew series was much more interesting and much less formulaic.)
Then my mom suggested I read the family copy of The Lord of the Rings instead, and I discovered a whole new world. Here was adventure. Here was sorrow. Here was dread. Here was love. Here was heroism. “The Scouring of the Shire” in particular had young-Cliff giddy with excitement. These books made me feel something and expanded my imagination. And it didn’t stop there. I remember crying in a closet at work after I finished Of Mice and Men. I identified with the obsessive Dante in The Count of Monte Cristo. Blue Like Jazz, a memoir about faith by Donald Miller, reframed how I viewed my own faith. The Power and the Glory filled me with pity and resolve to be a more courageous person.
So many good books have led me to profound emotional experiences or new ways of looking at things. And no one can convince me that I or anyone else would be just as well off if we’d stuck with The Hardy Boys.
Ergo, some books are better than others.
And helping develop a critical capacity in a reader is a wonderful gift—a literary mercy.
Thanks to many thoughtful people in my life (my mom, my childhood best friend, my professors) who cared for me, I became a richer, fuller person. So I propose that we who dare to criticize stories can and should do so in a spirit of a earnest love for the readers in our lives.
Is good literature objective or subjective?
In grad school, I took
’s Poetics class. We asked, “How do you assess whether literature is good?” We studied Aristotle, Horace, Sidney, Maritain, Augustine, and others to build our own philosophies.For our final paper, we had to write an objective definition of what made good literature good. I suspect it was a thought experiment/exercise more than her actually expecting a bunch of grad students to figure out something Aristotle had only half figured out.
Unfortunately for my grade, I had just finished reading C. S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism. I loved that book because his central idea was that criticizing literature relied on observing readers’ reactions to literature. If a single reader was able to react to a piece of literature in a healthy way that wasn’t escapism or an intellectual arms race, then we had to admit that the work of literature had some value as art.
I thought this was brilliant and proceeded to write my final paper in Christian Poetics on this subjective method of assessing good literature…
…when the assignment had been to come up with an objective system for assessing literature.
I was lucky I got a C.
But I still think we have to consider the subjective in literary criticism. After all, “objective” assessment of literature is just subjective assessment plus a rubric, right? And shouldn’t the way we read literature affect the value of it? If a piece of literature prompts only escapism, isn’t it less worthwhile than a piece of literature that prompts personal enrichment?
My personal philosophy continues to develop, but I can’t escape the need to acknowledge subjectivity in literary criticism. Acknowledged subjectivity requires humility, which is vital considering different cultures, backgrounds, and lives prompt different reactions to literature. Plus, it leads to more interesting discussions, which is half the fun of reading a good book anyway.
My three questions
To this end, I’ve come up with three questions that I personally use to assess whether a piece of literature is “good.” I know these are not end-alls in themselves, but they help me to get my head around this complicated topic. I present these hoping they’ll help readers to analyze what they’ve read so they can have deeper, fuller experiences with literature.
1. Vision: How worthwhile was the piece’s goal?
First, I consider authorial intent, historicism, and close reading to assess what the goal of the piece is. Then I think it’s necessary to use a blend of Critical Theory, Ethics, Philosophy, and common sense to determine whether it was worthwhile.
For example, the book Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is an ode to the power of story and the experience of reading. Doerr is showing how a single story can affect the imagination and worldview of people over millennia. That’s his goal.
And while Cloud Cuckoo Land’s goal to praise the concept of story and its impact in our lives isn’t revolutionary, it helps readers appreciate the act of reading more, which leaves them open to reading more deeply and growing more with other pieces of art. Personally, I think it’s a worthwhile goal, and this might be an easy agreement for most of us.
Of course, not all books are this easy, and some might disagree with me on my assessment of Cloud Cuckoo Land. We cannot escape the subjective in this first question, but it will certainly lead to some interesting discussions and the strengthening of critical faculties.
2. Execution: Did the piece accomplish its goal?
I use mostly old fashioned close reading (with nods to New Criticism and Structuralism) to determine whether the execution is effective. Does the form match and support the content? Is the book well written in light of this goal? Or does the book distract from its own goal?
In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr shows the lifespan of a single story stretching from ancient Greece to an apocalyptic future. The mechanics are excellent and nothing distracts from the end goal. Each part of the story is different, but all are well written and contribute to his goal of showing how a story can reach through thousands of years to impact the lives of readers anywhere.
This question is the most objective of the three. And while some stories’ answers will be obvious, others will take humility and effort to analyze.
3. Effect: Does this piece leave the reader a richer, fuller person?
What can I say about this question? It’s hopelessly subjective, and it can only be decided person-to-person. But I think it’s the most valuable of the three because if we can humble ourselves to listen to other people tell their experiences with a piece of literature, we can get a sense whether we might also have a deeper experience with that same piece.
I’ll go first: I thought Cloud Cuckoo Land was beautiful, and it inspired me to cherish story more because I understood better the different ways stories can change people. It made me empathize with the characters as they interacted with the story in their different lives. It made me want to tell more stories.
Cloud Cuckoo Land was powerful, and I was a richer, fuller person for having read it.
I hope this helps you read better, and I’ll end with a request so we can put this into practice:
Would you please share a piece of literature that you left you a richer, fuller person for having read it? And perhaps a couple of sentences explaining how? I’m a sucker for a good book, so it’ll probably end up on my ThriftBooks wishlist.
Thank you for sharing, and thank you for reading past the dragon with me. (Is that last bit too gimmicky? Whoops! Too late. Already published.)
How fun to read this just before I begin teaching Poetics as a weeklong intensive today!
This is a great post, Clifford! I actually recently bought Cloud Cuckoo and can’t wait to read it.
I will add that your point 2 actually is quite objective—well done! But of course, as you mention, none of it is really entirely subjective.
It was a gift to have you as a student!
Those are excellent benchmarks for deciding whether a literary work is good or bad. In answer to your question I'd like to mention "Inverted World" by Christopher Priest. It's part of the SFF genre so it will probably be the kind of thing you'll be interested in; I don't want to give anything away but after reading it I learned something about how complicated it can be to address the difference between objective truth and subjective experience. It's quite a good read, fulfilling all of your three criteria; I hope you get a chance to read it.