I feel obligated to leave a warning to the reader that this post might ramble more than my usual writing. I am recovering from a particularly nasty case of strep + sinus infection + double ear infection so I have been not feeling great for a while and have thus had a lot of time to think. Consider yourself warned.

What makes a good book?

At first glance it seems a relatively easy question to answer. One could probably say that a good book should entertain you. Most of the genres of books that are even remotely popular fit very cleanly within this definition…fiction/fantasy/sci-fi/etc.. However, there are books that don’t entertain me at all that I would still concede are probably good (for example Pilgrim’s Progress). Is that a book that people actually read and are entertained by, or do people just pretend to like it to impress academics? Perhaps that is a question that will never be answered.

Now we have determined that a book does not have to be entertaining to be good, so what other qualities can define this? Perhaps a book is good based on the impact it has on society? This definition seems a little more reasonable to me, because this allows us to describe boring books as being good. It also gives us a good way to say that trash books that may be popular are not good (sorry Twilight).

This does beg a couple questions though, such as how can we determine if a newly released book is good, and how much impact does a book need to have to be considered good? To the first question I would probably posit that a newly released book cannot be good because it has had no impact yet. If no ever ever read Pilgrim’s Progress, would it still be good? It would certainly have had no cultural impact and would probably have been lost to time since no one would have bothered to make and preserve copies of it (yay). To the second question I would say that the more impact a book has, the better it is.

I am sure if someone ever reads this blog they might have a problem with this definition. This imaginary hater might say something like “Good things are good because of their nature making them so, things are not good by the impact they have upon on the world”.

To this I reply “nah if a tree falls in the woods and no one heard it, it didn’t make a sound”. I don’t feel like writing a more detailed response so imaginary hater can keep on hating.

What kind of books do I like?

I like reading lots of different types of books, but I would say that my favorite genres are philosophy, fantasy, and historical fiction. As you can see, these all have in the common an element of the imaginary. Philosophy books let me have more intelligent arguments with imgainary version of myself in the shower and fantasy and historical fiction let me give my shower selves more interesting backstories.

What are your favorite books?

Hmm this a tough one because I like so many books but I will give it a shot.

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: Seriously go read this book it will change your life.
• Lord of the Rings: Greatest finished fantasy series.
• Shogun: Really interesting peak into feudal Japan.
• East of Eden: Prepare to be sad.

Do you like reading on E-readers?

No I hate them.

Do you like Audiobooks?

I used to not like them but now I do because it lets me listen while I drive and workout. I am no longer an audiobook hater.