Kirby
July 16th, 2002, 09:02 PM
You are in a book shop, staring at the fantasy/fiction shelves.
Without the recommendation of friends to go by (or even when you do have recommendations to check!), how do you decide to take a particular book home?
Me:
A good cover helps - it's what attracts me to a book initially.
Sometimes the name of the book too.
From there, rather than read the back cover, I'd first flip it open to a random page.
I do a quick name scan - too many names on a single page, each using as many "unconventional" letters as possible (eg - "x") is a pretty powerful deterrent (at least, to me).
Mention of the word "elf" used to cause a similar knee-jerk reaction too. I'm not sure why. I think I used to associate them with airy fairy characters that annoyed me. I may have gotten over that a bit.
Then I'd check the "readability factor" - how quickly would I be immersed? (This was how I came across the Robin Hobb books - it got to this stage, and I fell into it quite easily)
I'd go to the start and read some, then I'd pick another random page to check for consistency - trying to avoid spoilers!
Readability (for me) consists of a nice balance of good dialogue, actions, and description of setting. Grammar helps, but generally I expect published books to have been edited for that kind of thing.
If you can hook me on your characters, it's a good thing :)
The quality of the story is still a tricky one - but that's what you have to read the book for to find out, I guess!
If it's going scifi, I'm not much of a tech' head, so good sounding technical names, and not too many number codes, makes a book more palatable to me!(eg - "pass me the THX3003-diomexithyrus" is not as easy to follow as "pass me the Diomex") Techincal names used once at the start, and abbrieviated for the most part thereafter, is cool too.
Again, the sound of words is important to me - like the names of anything really, some sound better than others. I attribute my love of word sounds to Dr Seuss - LOL!
One other thing beyond the story itself, though less obvious, is also important to me - the typeset presentation. (I think this is more on the shoulders of the publishing house, than the author though.)
From a design background, I can say it is easier to read serif text than sans-serif, when you are looking at lots of writing.
Serif means the little aesthetic "feet" in fonts like "Times New Roman" or "Courier", but not in fonts like "Helvetica", "Arial" "Impact" or "Verdana". (Sans = without)
This is a line in Arial font
This is a line in Times font
Some fonts are simply harder to read comfortably.
It's a technical design thing to do with how easily our eyes recognise word SHAPES.
There's also a theory that we read words by the top half - take a piece of paper, cover the lower half of the line, and you should still be able to read it.
Apparantly a serif font is also easier on the eye.
Line length is also important - the longer the line across a page, the less ease there is in moving down to the start of the next line that follows.
(I prefer thick paperbacks to the larger hardcovers, sometimes, for this very reason.)
And finally I glance at the back of the book - I try not to read it too hard - I like a bit of mystery!
In a nutshell:
Word aesthetics in names, typeset aesthetics, and (for readability) a nice balance of description of appearance (surroundings, objects, people etc), action (big or small), and dialogue - not too long on any one thing!
How do you guys choose your books? Any similar criteria? Different?
Other means?
Without the recommendation of friends to go by (or even when you do have recommendations to check!), how do you decide to take a particular book home?
Me:
A good cover helps - it's what attracts me to a book initially.
Sometimes the name of the book too.
From there, rather than read the back cover, I'd first flip it open to a random page.
I do a quick name scan - too many names on a single page, each using as many "unconventional" letters as possible (eg - "x") is a pretty powerful deterrent (at least, to me).
Mention of the word "elf" used to cause a similar knee-jerk reaction too. I'm not sure why. I think I used to associate them with airy fairy characters that annoyed me. I may have gotten over that a bit.
Then I'd check the "readability factor" - how quickly would I be immersed? (This was how I came across the Robin Hobb books - it got to this stage, and I fell into it quite easily)
I'd go to the start and read some, then I'd pick another random page to check for consistency - trying to avoid spoilers!
Readability (for me) consists of a nice balance of good dialogue, actions, and description of setting. Grammar helps, but generally I expect published books to have been edited for that kind of thing.
If you can hook me on your characters, it's a good thing :)
The quality of the story is still a tricky one - but that's what you have to read the book for to find out, I guess!
If it's going scifi, I'm not much of a tech' head, so good sounding technical names, and not too many number codes, makes a book more palatable to me!(eg - "pass me the THX3003-diomexithyrus" is not as easy to follow as "pass me the Diomex") Techincal names used once at the start, and abbrieviated for the most part thereafter, is cool too.
Again, the sound of words is important to me - like the names of anything really, some sound better than others. I attribute my love of word sounds to Dr Seuss - LOL!
One other thing beyond the story itself, though less obvious, is also important to me - the typeset presentation. (I think this is more on the shoulders of the publishing house, than the author though.)
From a design background, I can say it is easier to read serif text than sans-serif, when you are looking at lots of writing.
Serif means the little aesthetic "feet" in fonts like "Times New Roman" or "Courier", but not in fonts like "Helvetica", "Arial" "Impact" or "Verdana". (Sans = without)
This is a line in Arial font
This is a line in Times font
Some fonts are simply harder to read comfortably.
It's a technical design thing to do with how easily our eyes recognise word SHAPES.
There's also a theory that we read words by the top half - take a piece of paper, cover the lower half of the line, and you should still be able to read it.
Apparantly a serif font is also easier on the eye.
Line length is also important - the longer the line across a page, the less ease there is in moving down to the start of the next line that follows.
(I prefer thick paperbacks to the larger hardcovers, sometimes, for this very reason.)
And finally I glance at the back of the book - I try not to read it too hard - I like a bit of mystery!
In a nutshell:
Word aesthetics in names, typeset aesthetics, and (for readability) a nice balance of description of appearance (surroundings, objects, people etc), action (big or small), and dialogue - not too long on any one thing!
How do you guys choose your books? Any similar criteria? Different?
Other means?