What is a Good Book?

What is a good book?

A good book to you might not be a good book to me, so what makes a really, truly entertaining book?

Pace?
If a book has pace, you wiz through it, so surely a page turner is a good book?

Well, not always.

Take Robert Harris's An Officer and a Spy as an example. I have lamented the virtues of this book in previous posts and I stick by what I said then, it is a page turner, and a most excellent read, but if you look at Dan Brown's Inferno, also a page turner with lots of action, historical references and famous places, you could be fooled into thinking the same, but you'd be wrong.

Dan Brown's research is second to none, but his well used characters are starting to wear a bit thin now, and another megalomaniac getting their comeuppance at the hand of Robert Langdon is getting a bit tiresome.
Length then?
We all know how important size is, but again, don't be fooled. 
Some of my all time favourite books are less than two hundred pages long. H.G.Wells, The War of the Worlds and Richard Matheson's, I am Legend, spring to mind, and at the other end of the spectrum there's Stephen King's, The Stand and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, which extend to many hundreds of pages, but which I love in equal measure.
The King, Queen and Prince of all books for me, is J.R.R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a book so sublime that I will take it from the shelf every so often, blow of the dust and read random passages; weird!
Genre then?
No, still barking up the wrong tree. You can see from of my shelfie photo above, that teen-fiction mixes with old classics, horror with Sci-Fi, hardback with soft and they are in no particular order. Short books mix with long, old books rub binds with new, so, what it a good book?

There is a saying in the photographic community, that the best camera in the world, is the one you have with you, and I think this applies to books too. 
Yes there are duff ones, and some you won't get; some are poorly written, some too long, but when I leave the house every morning, I know how lost I'd feel if I didn't take my long, new, old, short, horror, young adult, classic, hardback, book with me. So pick something, anything before you leave for work, go on holiday, sit down with a cup of tea, and I guarantee it will be better than having no book at all.

Inferno, book review. (Dan Brown)

If you've ever read one of Dan Brown's other Robert Langdon novels, The Da-Vinci Code, for example, which most of the world has, then you'll sort of know what to expect with this one.

The thing is they seem to be getting more and more elaborate, and clutching at more and more straws, yet draw a similar conclusion. 

Take Angels and Demons as an example. Mad man steals a lethal vial of anti-matter, which if the church don't pray hard enough and finish conclave, elect their new pope, the said madman, the whole of the Vatican along with the whole Catholic religion, will be destroyed.

The Da-Vinci Code: mad man decides to put an end to the holy grain, (which happens to be a human, not a chalice) by killing all those who might be descended from Christ (this has been going on for centuries apparently), but if Langdon can solve the unsolvable cryptext, which first he has to find, and then elicit the help of a Grail lover, who happens to have loads and loads of cash, all might end well. 

So, Inferno! Inferno is about a mad man, who has untold wealth, (ring any bells yet) who intends to change the world for ever, because he believes that humans will go extinct within the next one hundred years. Good plan, well, forget about the plan for a second, we're in Italy, Florence to be precise, where we get to experience the beauty of that ancient city, as our main character gets repeatedly shot at, escapes, shot at again, bundled on a plane, taken to Turkey, where more mysterious stuff happens, so all can end well, again.

Don't get me wrong, if you like fast paced action, you'll like this book. If you like expertly researched books, which make you feel like you're actually there, then again, you'll like this book. My problem is that all this running around by the same character is getting a bit long in the tooth now. 

So Inferno gets a well-deserved three stars; and I hope, I wish, that Dan Brown moves on from Robert Langdon now, and his next book is just as well researched, just as fast paced, but more believable. 

Inspiration for the day goes to all the men and women who are manning the phones, driving the ambulances and stick or sowing us back together this Christmas. I salute you.