What do you look for in a novel?

I go for anything that doesn't have a shawl or a cardigan on the cover .

Love UQD's boycott list. jeanious. (Even if I don't agree with some of it: I LOVE American fiction. So many English writers - especially the male ones published by Picador - allow their numerous angsty hang-ups to dominate the narrative tone.

lol @ genteel adultery. Lunchtime concerts at the Wigmore Hall, tea at Fred's then shagging on beds made up with linen from the White Company?

I think with "inward-looking" and "me novel" she means the same thing. I've certainly read a few of those. Set in Hampstead or other fashionable London suburb, featuring characters with all the free time in the world who spend their lives in coffee houses and antique shops, or committing genteel adultery while ruminating on the state of their "hearts".

I am laughing at UQD's boycott list.

You hvae to go beyond WH Smiths to choose a good book, then?

Funny how shed/urine has overtaken chardonnay-based life forms in search of man in the last few years.

My criteria starts as Bink's does, Good quality writing. I like a range of genres and scale - but it has to be an emphatic version of it. I like it to have real meaning and speak of issues of our time, or else be revelationary - though I do enjoy funny and gripping novels - Case Histories would fall into that category.

And it has to be good quality print. Hiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss is sitting on the shlf because the print is so blurry and low-quality and tiny that I can't read it.

an eye catching picture. As shallow as that

Lot's of word. Otherwise it's just boring.

i should imagine he somehow caused his sister Clara to go Outside at Night and look for him, whereby she fell victim to the night air, wasted away and died (cue deathbed scene - '"Oh Dick! I can see the Angels! And Mother!' Dick raised his head and looked at Reverend Blorkins. "Yes, Dick", said his venerable friend, tears gleaming in his eyes. "You must be joyful. Clara is no longer a weary sojourner in the vale of tears, but has gone before to the happier lands to which we all look". Dick set his jaw and rose slowly to his feet. "My beloved Clara, you are no longer in pain and you are with Mother. Happy, happy Clara! Praise God!"'

Kathy - Might his mistake involve Clara and Rohypnol?

Dick is respectable working-class. His mistake is somehow going to involve his sister Clara. I think it's going to be something a bit racier than what Bink says. Whatever it is, it will cause young women in long white dresses to swoon around in armchairs looking very depressed, judging by the pics.

I look for:

1. a pink cover.
2. its title on the email about the next book club.
3. anything i've read a million times before to give me an incentive to peel myself out of bed rather than just lie there groaning.

Or might Dick's mistake be:
a) Going to Sainsbury's car-park at 1am?
b) Looking into the steamed-up vehicle?
c) Never having heard of dogging?

Ooh I know about SPCK books.
Dick's mistake will be ... hmmm. Is Dick a pious orphan? Or a complacently well-fed, well-parented, in possession of all advantages, child? Or, possibly, a dog?

Assuming he is No.2 of those options, Dick's error is going to have been truanting from Sunday School (at the instigation of a boy whose sense of right and wrong Dick should have known is doubtful - there'll have been a Fib told in one of the earlier chapters). Because of the truanting, Dick will find himself caught up in, let's see, petty theft - not that he'll do any, but he'll be an accessory. But he will cross paths with, natch, a pious orphan, whose selfless concern for her elderly neighbour will make himself see himself anew. And somehow the pious orphan nexus will absolve him from the petty theft cliffhanger.

The pious orphan will become a regular at Dick's Sunday School, but class distinctions will be maintained (ie they will not end up planning to marry).

If Dick is a dog, however ...

I like books that really give me an insight into another place or another time. DH and I are currently fighting over a book called 'Dick's Mistake' which his great-great aunt won as a Sunday school prize in 1896. It was published by the SPCK. We're three chapters into it and we still don't know what Dick's mistake was.

I avoid slim literary volumes about serial killers.

I look for:

Excellent writing
Theme - a really big question underlying the text: I want to know the writer has been compelled to write the book by Serious Metaphysical Consideration
Provocation - implicit encouragement to examine an issue/question/dilemma you haven't before
Identifiable/likeable (this may be a weakness of mine, and also may be part of the potential conflict between enjoyment/appreciation vis., for me, Money by Martin Amis) characters

Most importantly, I want the form of the book to add something - I want the way it is written to be additive to the story, to tell me something about how the author thinks of their story as an organism. Aware this sounds massively wanky but is the product of much contemplation on the difference between literature and fiction. Vis. Infinite Jest for an excellent example, but there are myriad others.

ps UQD you would exclude David Foster Wallace multiple times over on your criteria (I think the precocious bastard wrote IJ before he was 30, and certainly did The Broom of the System), and that would be a crying shame.

UQD - Susan Hill - "Thin, beautifully written, inward-looking contemporary literary novels are not fashionable and the 'me' novel does not find a place in this selection."
What does she mean?
Can't something be thin, beautifully written and outward-looking?
What is a 'me' novel?

Her blog is too wordy -I found myself peering at my nails and intercepting emails the moment they pinged in.

swedes - interesting post by Susan Hill on her blog about the R&L selection on long books vs. short books:

"You will find that most of them deal with countries other than this one and times other than now and several deal with war in one way or other. These are the books which have meat - the writers have something to write about, a story to tell, a time to immerse themselves in, another country to describe. This is the sort of book which a lot of people are reading now. They want meat. Thin, beautifully written, inward-looking contemporary literary novels are not fashionable and the 'me' novel does not find a place in this selection."

I agree with 100x, being prejudiced and presecriptive results in something quite narrow which is surely the opposite of what you are hoping? Isn't it a bit like being stuck with 1980s make-up when perhaps you could be a bit more open-minded?

I really enjoy Anne Tyler's writing. Has anyone read any Raymond Carver? He is so economical and precise in his writing - he perfectly captures the rhythms of speech. I loathe wordy books - this often spoils a really good story. Authors - what is wrong with a short book? Why are there no slim volumes of anything? Is it a marketing/sales thing?

I am also a lover of non-fiction from time to time. At the moment I am reading Irrationality by Sutherland. Evan Davies recommended it and it is the sort of book that informs and really makes you think, hard.

I'm not entirely serious about my prejudices. I love to go into a bookshop and pick something up by a new writer I've not heard of. It's just that there is so much out there now that i feel I'll never keep up with it unless I exercise some kind of quality control!

Writers of course don't always make good readers, but they should try to be.

I disagree with UQD, I don't think limits and prejudice are the way to go.

It is much better to be a non-prescriptive reader and open yourself out to suggestions and surprises and accidents.
Its absurd to never read Americans - you miss some of the best novels of recent years - everyone should read Richard Ford and Philip Roth and John Updike and probably Saul Bellow and Anne Tyler and oh just all of them.

Open-handed, open minded. Be a good reader. Being a good reader is important I think. Don't expect the book to live up to what YOU want it to be, let it be itself and then decide if you like it/want to pursue it/are interested in the story/are interested to see what the novelist aimed to do and whether they pulled it off.

True enough! Oh, if only all mine were all still in print...

Re 2nd hand books: writer gets nowt but if the book in q is either out of print or not readily available in the shops, it could get a reader interested enough to buy more recent output. But maybe all your stuff is still in print.