What do you look for in a novel?

I find it irritating, when people put excessive commas in, like this, which make it clear, that they don't know how to use them, and you find this, even in published fiction, which makes me think that the editor, was as illiterate, as the writer, they do it where there should be a new sentence as well.

Also, as I say to the children when they want to tell me What I Dreamt Last Night - there needs to be at least one joke in it.

Something that makes me think - some books have made me get encyclopedias (sp) down to check some random fact a character mentioned. Magic realism books tend to be quite good for this. One book I read mentioned the 'Admirable Bede' so I couldn't rest until I'd found out what/whom they were.

Gaps in the narrative so you can insert your own take on the book as UQD says.

Decently written sentences with connectives being used instead of a series of commas. American authors tend to be the worst culprits, possibly to make the text more punchy but I have seen it in British authors. If I wanted to read a list, I'd read a till receipt.

Ages ago I decided the only way forward was to be completely prejudiced, otherwise I'd end up with an even bigger pile of unread novels.

I mentioned this in a previous thread and quote myself verbatim here. I boycott the following writers:

• Anyone whose biog reveals they have more than one home ("she lives in London and Hampshire").

• Anyone who "divides their time" between two places (especially in different countries).

• Anyone under 30.

• Anyone who has been excessively drooled over in the press.

• Anyone who looks too much like a smug yummy-mummy.

• Anyone who has had a recently well-publicised literary "spat".

• Any author with a "de" in their name. (Obviously your trust fund means you never had to get a day job to subsidise your writing habit, you smug bastard.)

• Most people with famous surnames. Ditto.

• Americans. A few honourable exceptions allowed, but definitely not if they are Director of the Creative Writing Program (sic) at Shitkicker College, Nebraska.

• Any "writer" whose suspiciously photogenic mugshot suggests that they weren't exactly employed for their writing abilities.

• Anything touted as this year's Hot Young Thing. If it's good, it will depress; if it's bad, it will annoy. (I made an exception for "The Beach" and was annoyed and depressed in fairly equal measures.)

• Any "novel" about a wacky London career girl and her search for a man. Written in lunch-hours by illiterate bubbleheads and commissioned by same.

• Hideous memoirs about people who were forced to go and stand in sheds in pools of their own urine and were regularly beaten by their mother and the local nuns, before emerging to a greater understanding of it all through lurve or therapy.

Also, I impose quotas: in any calendar year, no more than one Irish novel, one gay novel, one family saga spanning the generations and one "sensitive" portrayal of growing up in an exotic locale. (Idea pinched from Julian Barnes.)

What a good question! Sometimes I go in a book shop and don't know where to start. If I haven't read a review or am not going for a tried and tested author, the cover attracts me, then the blurb then the 1st few sentences.

I think the worst kind of novel is when you 'notice' the writing IYKWIM, either because it's bad, or they are trying too hard, or worst of all if there are typos.
That puts me right off.

The length of the chapters is important to me as I probably read about the same every day and HATE to put the book down in the middle of a chapter!

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The worst writing also tells you everything. It leads you in cautiously, sets up, does, then explains/justifies.

The best writing just does - characters express themselves through word and deed and the judgement is left to the reader.

UqD has said it for me - giving a toss, is all.

No point reading it if by the end you don't care what happens to anyone.

I tend to love books which have fully realised characters who you actually MISS when you've finished the book.

You have to feel as if you are there and as if you give a toss. The worst novels are not those which are badly written as such but those which just leave you feeling "so what?"

A lot has to do with the writer having a compelling "voice", which is one of the hardest things to "get". My students slave and sweat over it, but I keep telling them they won't get it if they are trying.

Literate writing: incomplete sentences are theoretically OK, in the right circumstances, but eg anything that has incomplete sentences in italics purporting to constitute the whole of an emphatic paragraph (Dan Brown, Stephen King) goes in the bin.

Like this.

Also, I was put right off some novel recently by the writer's using "alright" instead of "all right". To quote a very literate writer, that is fingernails down the blackboard of the mind.

Triviality doesn't appeal either - those novels where you are told exactly what the heroine is wearing & where she bought it.

It's easier to say what one doesn't like than does, though - as "well written with characters that come alive" is a standard that could vary massively with the individual reader. I think that describes Trollope; but not Lisa Jewell - or any "commercial fiction" at all.

I actually use amazon recommendations as a springing board and just give it a go!!! They've been surprisingly good so far.

I read the first page, look at the type, cover an d general feel of the book - this always takes me ages, and I'm often disappointed ! But the presentation/design bits count for a lot with me...