Good vs. Great by Gerri Brousseau

What is the difference between a good book and a great book?  I have read countless numbers of novels and some are good, some are horrid and I wonder how they ever got published, and then there are the absolutely great ones … the books you can't put down and when you finally reach the end, you are sorry it's over.  What is it that makes the great one so great?  Is it the novel that reaches into your soul and touches every emotion?  Is it the one that makes you laugh and makes you cry?  Is it the one that brings you to sympathize with the characters who struggle coming to grips with things that perhaps you, yourself, have had to deal with, or perhaps some tragic event that you can scarcely imagine in your worst nightmares?  We hang onto every word clinging to the hope that the hero will prevail or that the heroine will survive and fall madly in love with the hero.

I wonder what inspires the author of the great novel to pen it.  Was it some tragic event in their life or the life of someone close to them?  Was it merely a dream?  What makes this seed of an idea in a writer's mind blossom into the great novel?  What is the difference in the good writer versus the great writer?  Then I ask myself, is it the writer or the reader?  Perhaps the novel is great to me, the reader, because it speaks to my soul at a particular time in my life.  Perhaps reading the same novel at any other given time would have me render a different opinion of the work.  So then, is it the timing or is it perhaps like the perfect storm … the writer who pens a powerful novel, the reader who picks up the book at the precise time in their life when the work would impact them in such a way that would make them think the book was great?

Regardless of what unseen forces combine to make a novel great, we all have our favorites.  Novels that have touched us, changed our lives, gave us courage to forge ahead against what at a particular time in our life seemed insurmountable odds, made us want to write, made us want to travel, fall in love, take chances, live a powerful and strong life.  What novel is your favorite?  Which author spoke to your soul?  What book changed your life?

Filed under: Good vs. Great, romance