Good Books--or not

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. That will come to a screaming halt as I go back to writing on Monday, but for the month of August I let myself enjoy books as a reader again. I love books, I always have. That's probably why I became a writer. I've never heard of a single author who didn't read like crazy. Makes sense, I've never heard of a chef who didn't like food either.

Anyway, I've gotten my hands on just a ton of books and probably read close to 50 in the month of August. Some of them were good, some of them were AWESOME and some were really bad. The ones that were bad weren't necessarily poorly written. Some of them didn't grab my attention, some of them had mistakes that I always make so it pushed some hot buttons for me, and some of them were just downright boring.

It got me to thinking, what makes a good book? Yesterday I posted about my friend Lori's book that had me up until 2 because I couldn't put it down. Now this book hasn't been in the hands of an editor yet, it's still in a somewhat "rough" stage. I mean, that's the point of sending it to a critique partner, but still it had me hooked almost immediately. Some of the other books I read and didn't like came from big publishing houses and had obviously been through edits already. (Duh, or else they wouldn't be in a published novel.) What was it about Lori's book, or any of the other books that I loved that worked that magic?

And more importantly, how can I do the same thing, hahahahaha

Uh, I had more to say on this, some of it might have even been profound, but my darling children just created a major disaster in my kitchen and I've lost my train of thought. I guess I'll end with this random idea. We all have stories to tell, the trick is to tell them in such a manner that people want to hear them.

I'm thinking that's probably going to be a life long challenge. I hope I'm up for it!