A good book

I've been thinking a lot lately about why it is that I enjoy books. I mean, obviously I do, or I wouldn't want to write them, and I've liked them for as long as I can remember. I've also had the innate ability to, pun intended, judge a book by its cover. I look at things, and I know whether or not I'm going to like them based solely on first impressions. Am I wrong sometimes? Sure. But probably a lot less than you would think.

There are some things that obviously will make me more likely to pick up a book. Being in a genre that I like, being written by an author I'm familiar with, having sword and/or dragons. I'm a simple man. But there's just something that I can see in the titles and covers of books that makes me know whether or not it's going to be something I want to read. Something about the way it catches my eye. And a lot of the time, when other people try to recommend me books, it doesn't work out to well. Not to say that it never does, cause it certainly has and I'm always glad to be proven wrong on that kind of thing, but it just doesn't happen that often.

There are things about the contents of a story I know that I like, though. The one I talk about most often is character development. If a character starts off in one way, and by the end of the story they have gone through a logical and observable evolution into something greater, than it could be about practically anything and I would love it. There's just something magical to me about watching someone grow. I would imagine that anyone who has ever played the role of a teacher or parent can sympathize with me on that one.

Another one I talk about a little less often is hope. You can write the darkest story on earth and I will read it if there is hope to it. That sounds really vague, and it's kind of hard to explain. So let me go through it backwards and see if that helps.

I don't like Game of Thrones. I hate it, in fact. Weird for the medieval guy, I know, but I have my reasons. That book is the penultimate story of no hope. Characters die left and right, and if they're not dying, they're losing everything that they hold dear to them. I managed to read the entirety of the first book, and by the end, there was only one character of easily a dozen who had any hope to her life, and that was only after everything else had been stripped away from her. I didn't want to be in that world. I didn't want to experience a story where you're better off dead than alive, because then you wouldn't have to deal with all the bullshit that was going on in the rest of the story.

Those are probably the two biggest things for me. I mean, obviously I want it to be well written, and to make sense, but development and hope are the building blocks upon which you apply good writing technique if you want me to like your story.

Not that you probably do. It's your story, why the hell should you care what I think?