Get to Know Me: Reading Edition

why knowing your reviewer's taste matters

Most of us who’ve dipped a toe into the worlds of bookstagram, booktok or booktube will know that we tend to gravitate towards those creators who read broadly the same genres as we do. But I would say getting the most out of your online browsing needs even more granular attention paid to taste, and the taste of your reviewer.

A few months ago I listened to this podcast by Sara from Fiction Matters in conversation with Traci Thomas, a fellow book reviewer from The Stacks Podcast. In it, Traci explained that the reason she reviews every book she reads is to give her community a good sense of her taste, and that includes what she doesn’t like just as much as what she does (something I also do). She explains how she appreciated when a publication would have a staff critic who would review everything; her knowledge of their taste made the critique more helpful to her. These days, it’s much harder to get that experience from traditional media as so few publications are employing staff critics long term, and often bring in different freelancers also (not a dig at said freelancers - I’ve done this myself!) This lack of continuity and context can make reviews difficult to parse for the average reader. We all know the feeling of picking up a book based on a glowing review only to end up sorely disappointed. Luckily, I think online book creators can plug the gap a little, but only if we’re willing to give a well rounded sense of our taste; both our likes and dislikes.

I’ve talked about taste a bit myself over the last year or so in my posts about becoming a reader. Firstly, I think it’s important to consciously develop your sense of your personal taste. If you have a good sense of what you do and don’t like, that means you’re more likely to find books that’ll work for you and if you can find books that’ll work for you, you read more and you enjoy reading more. Finding books is honestly half the battle when it comes to cultivating a fruitful reading life. Knowing this stuff can help you read reviews better. Reviews of all kinds, of course, but I’ve often said it’s the negative reviews of a book I find myself looking to on the likes of Storygraph or Goodreads, and I’ve read many a two star review which has convinced me to read a book.

A negative review is so much more likely to engage with the nitty gritty. I speak from experience, I find writing positive reviews a lot harder. I loved… the writing? The storyline? Broadly speaking, we all gush about our favourite books in similar ways. I try to counter this in my own reviews by attempting to get a good grip on why I liked a book, but I’ve found it to be a useful general rule. And knowing my own tastes, I can more easily dissect the review from there; too quiet, slow, reflective, boring? Could very well be my thing. Devoid of what Brandon Taylor calls moral worldbuilding (i.e. culture, values, history)? Probably not my thing.

So today I thought I would try and offer you a glimpse into my taste in books, in the hopes that it will help you engage with my reviews better and also perhaps as a jumping off point for you to think about your own. To be clear, though, my goal is not to find a readership who is aligned entirely in taste. In practical terms I don’t think that’s even feasible, are there two avid readers on earth who agree on absolutely everything they read? There can be no interesting discussion without sometimes differing in opinion. You might be aligned with me on some things and others not; it’s knowing which is which that’s most helpful. But I also know mine is not the One True Correct Taste. It’s just what I like, based on all my own experiences in life and reading.

Finally, I want the sense of personal taste to be an expansive, not restrictive thing. In a lifetime where I won’t be able to read all the literature I would surely love, it focuses me and gives me direction when I’m picking reading material. But that’s not to say I don’t experiment and step outside the box from time to time (and chatting to other readers is one of the best ways to do this!) And how would you be able to identify those books you love if you don’t sometimes read stuff you just kinda like, or maybe even hate? But I think that’s probably food for thought for another essay. As is an engagement with the concept of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ taste, and where pretentiousness or snobbishness fits in. For now, let’s stick a pin in that and proceed.

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Okay, preamble over, what do I like/not like?

In my original plan for this post, I was going to take you through specific books that I love in a much more straightforward way, but I now feel prompted to answer the question more generally. What exactly is it that I like in my books? My taste is likely informed by two major things: first being a huge bookworm as a child, reading mostly speculative fiction as children often do, and second going on to study English literature at a higher level. Obviously I favour fiction, and have decided to focus on it here lest this become the longest piece ever, but I have been incorporating more and more great nonfiction into my reading lately for which I feel I have a whole different set of likes and dislikes… more on that soon I’m sure.

Because of this long history of loving English in the classroom, I am an incorrigible close reader, especially when it comes to books marketed as ‘literary’. My essay brain never quite switches off, and I’m a bit of a stickler for the language. I like my authors to be meticulous about their vocabulary choice, their sentence structure. Hilary Mantel springs to mind, as does Toni Morrison. I’m also looking for great theming and a solid ideological base to the book. I want to feel like the author is holding a particular set of ideas in their mind, even if it’s subconsciously. A book lacks depth for me if the author is trying to write somehow outside frameworks of power (about ‘being a human’ with no mention of socioeconomic realities, for example). If they seem unaware that realism is not apolitical or objective. This kind of depth is something I always look for in my books.

Very often lovers of literary fiction will note that plot is often secondary to character work, and perhaps they’ll say they don’t mind this kind of book. But then they’ll read a plotless novel that really doesn’t work for them (yes this hypothetical person is/has been me). I would argue that more often than not it’s because these novels are not engaged with the context of their character’s world, and that it’s not entirely to do with plot at all. An underlying structure of ideas doesn’t have to be overt and on the nose, but it needs to be there. And it doesn’t need to be perfectly aligned with the way I see the world to be interesting to me. Sometimes when I encounter a book with a more harmful underlying ideology—A Little Life perhaps, or more recently for me, Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow—it prompts some interesting discussions, and can lead to further engagement with difficult topics. These books won’t make it onto my favourites list, but at least they’re doing something.

Unsurprisingly therefore, I don’t really get on with what I call ‘typing authors’ (Moshfegh would come into this category for me). I sense that there’s less of an underlying ideology or thought process at the starting point of the work, and they usually follow one core voice or idea in a more flowing, freestyling way. A totally valid way to work and I know lots of people like this approach because it often reads well, but it doesn’t tend to work for me. I find myself picking apart generalisations or word choice, and find the overall effect a bit hollow. So a good sentence alone won’t reel me in.

If they experiment with form I want there to be a reason why, I want it to work with the content in interesting ways. This is how I love to engage with my books and the better an author does it, the more enjoyment I get out it. I actually want to do a little bit of work, a little bit of digging. For other readers, it makes total sense that this really ruins their experience, that authors like Mantel or Morrison have too opaque a style to be enjoyable. It really depends what kind of experience you’re looking for when you sit down to read. And perhaps you have different moods for different times. But it stands to reason that I’m not averse to a challenging, experimental book, though I’m wary of those books that do it for no good reason or are just trying to be clever (House of Leaves, I’m looking at you).

Having said that, I’m not always looking to be directly challenged. I’m also looking for books that are just darn good reads. They are propulsive, they have richly drawn characters, they are immersive. We know them when we find them; the enduring popularity of The Secret History is testament to this kind of novel. This desire likely stems more from my lifelong love of reading, rather than my academic background. They don’t have to be highly plotted, either. I often love quiet, reflective books where nothing overly dramatic happens. It is in the ripples of small, seemingly insignificant moments in books that I have found much solace (In the Distance, Stoner, The Greenlanders, Gilead are some of my all time favourites that fall into this category). These books require something of the reader that is different from the more opaque stylists; a kind of readerly patience. It won’t surprise you, then, that I most often read medium- and slow-paced books. Too often fast-paced reads leave out all the detail I love. And as it often crops up in these types of books, it’d be a good time to mention that I am particularly sensitive to narrative ‘warmth’. Sometimes I’ll love a book almost on warmth alone. This is a rare skill amongst authors, this ability to bring real life to their novels. The actual story doesn’t need to be upbeat or positive by any means—none of the above are particularly happy stories—but instead there’s a careful balance of light and dark and a deep sense of compassion for the characters.

And of course, I read ‘genre fiction’, too. I have launched many a defence of speculative fiction (sci fi, fantasy, the weird, horror) on my platforms over the last few years, because I think so many otherwise well-read people overlook some of the best authors writing over the last century, just because they wrote/write in these genres; Ursula Le Guin, Samuel Delany, Mervyn Peake, China Miéville. I wrote my Master’s dissertation on N. K. Jemisin’s fantastic Broken Earth trilogy, and Jeff VanderMeer is one of my favourite authors of all time. Luckily, I do sense change in the air.

I mentioned Brandon Taylor’s recent essay on moral worldbuilding above (and thank you Kelly from our Patreon community for sharing this with us!), and although he is talking about classics vs. contemporary literary fiction in that essay, I actually think it also indirectly pinpoints why I champion speculative fiction so much. The more typical worldbuilding required of a science fiction or fantasy novel very often has inbuilt moral worldbuilding too, at least in the best examples. By moving away from the minutiae of trying to mimetically recreate life on the page somehow, a skilled speculative fiction author must engage with, reform or recreate the power structures that gird our lives, reckoning with gender, race, class, queerness, science, religion, the natural world, technology… As I said, my favourite fiction across all genres always engages with these wider themes. But of course, some of the above are just bloody great stylists, too, and we shouldn’t ignore them just because they have dragons or spaceships in their stories (we love dragons and spaceships, by the way). Indeed, it’s time to acknowledge that sometimes, particularly in fantasy or the weird, authors are engaging with our oldest forms of storytelling, and are preserving these forms and recalibrating them from their particular(/our) historical perspective. This is valuable in and of itself. I also think there’s a bit more pressure in these genres to actually write a good yarn, which is often missing from the contemporary literary scene.

I have different standards across the genres, too. I’ve been a bit dismissive of romance in the past, but I’ve been given some great recommendations by the Patreon community and it has me excited to explore the genre more. For romance I’m willing to take off my close reading hat, but you need great dialogue and a strong sense of chemistry and verve (Jane Austen endures for this very reason). In thrillers you need fantastic plotting (extremely hard to do and so good when you find it). Historical fiction needs a good balance of research and worldbuilding of its own, whilst still drawing you in to the story itself. When it comes to the speculative, I am looking for something with literary merit and I tend to shy away from overly tropey work (no Sarah J. Maas for me). I want it to push boundaries, be a little unique, and perhaps engage with or build on the work of older authors in the genre. Or if it is more traditional, like Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings, I want the character work, magic system, plotting and writing to be really strong, nuanced and immersive. Just because it feels familiar, doesn’t mean Hobb is not bringing some interesting concepts to the table. And of course as I’ve already touched upon, I want my literary fiction to be deeply engaged with the art of literature itself. I have the highest standards for this genre when it comes to the writing.

When I could specialise in my undergrad, I always opted for courses in contemporary fiction, as I connect with it more easily, and of course find the themes more applicable to my actual life. And don’t let anybody tell you that older literature is better or marks you as more intelligent or any other bullsh*t they come up with. You deserve to read stuff that feels relevant to you. But I do enjoy a good classic, and there will be plenty of them featured here. I also predominantly read backlist titles as I’ve been burned too many times by the hype of new releases, and find it much easier to find great books in the many decades of the past available to me, rather than just the last few months’ pickings. To immediately contradict myself, though, I’m sure I will be bringing you my thoughts on the latest books from time to time. And finally, I’m always trying to read from a wide range of perspectives and somehow squeeze more translated fiction into my ever-expanding tbr.

Would you put all these things in the category of personal taste? I’m inclined to say yes. Perhaps too general for some, too specific for others. These are things that make a good novel for me, so I think the categorisation works. So now the question is, what defines your taste? By which books did you come to know it? Is there still some experimentation still be to be done, with different genres, different authors, different ways of reading? I very much looking forward to seeing where we meet but also, where we don’t.