Focus on Reading - Week 32 - The Style

[Booknblues]

Are there writing styles you enjoy?
What books illustrate the style?
Are there styles you avoid?
What books?

[Robin P]

There is a certain style in fantasy that I like. It is poetic and evocative without detracting from the story. The main example of this is Guy Gavriel Kay. Patrick Rothfuss is the closest to this that I have found.

I don't like styles that seem to get in the way of the story and characters, like the author wants to show they went to a writers' workshop. It seems like a fair number of prize-winning books are like that. One I can think of is Tinkers.

I don't like awkward dialogue or asides put in just to give you historical information (the famous info dump). Someone referred to this as the "your father, the king" speech or "as you know" - well, if they know why would a character say it again? The best historical fiction, sci-fi, mystery, or fantasy throws you into a world and lets you discover as you go what the elements are. A couple of excellent authors of this are Dorothy Dunnett and Hilary Mantel. But you have to have some knowledge of history beforehand or you would be really frustrated.

[Holly R W]

Style is such a hard thing to describe, but I'll try. Here's what appeals to me. I tend to like a genre that GR calls 'Realistic Fiction'. This is fiction that is less plot driven and is more focused upon creating believable characters. Authors who write in this way describe that sometimes, their own created characters surprise them with what they say and do.

I look for:
* Nuanced writing - depth of characters
* Third person narration - I find that I (usually) dislike first person narratives in fiction.
* Interesting dialogue
* Less description
* Original, creative thinking
* When called for, a sense of humor or playfulness
* In some books, a bit of magical realism when appropriate - too much can spoil the story
* There has to be some drama or action that moves the story along. It can't just be a character study.

Pet Peeve: There's a current trend to put way too much trauma in a story. A little goes a long way.

Some books with styles I like are:

Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
News of the World by Paulette Jiles
The Unseen World by Liz Moore
Dominicana by Angie Cruz

[Jgrace]

I think that I am an eclectic reader. I'm also a mood reader. I enjoy different styles for different moods. A book that appeals to me at one time might annoy me at another.

I find it easier to think about styles I don't like, but I can usually find an exception to my dislike. Most of the time I don't care for stream of consciousness writing, but I can appreciate Mrs. Dalloway and when Ali Smith inserts the interior thinking of her quirky characters, I love it.

I don't usually care for the egoism of contemporary memoirs, but Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood was inspiring and Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir was tragically moving. However, Becoming couldn't hold my interest and I don't know why because I admire the woman.

[Sallys]

I tend to like literary fiction with strong characters and good stories.

[Booknblues]

I began thinking about styles because I attempted Middlemarch unsuccessfully and read Emma last year and struggled with it. I read any number of books written in that period in high school and loved them.

It may be that I will come back around to them, but I will say that at this minute, I do not care for the style and feel a bit sacrilegious about it.

I love what I call a "homespun" voice and have loved any number of books. Doc, News of the World, Days Without End and many Mark Twain.

I consider myself eclectic, but with some strong likes and dislikes.

I don't mind a stream of consciousness, but there are some mind, I don't want to stream from. I liked Autumn when I sat back and thought about it, but I did not particularly like reading it. The style of the writing did not strongly appeal to me.

There are some books which I just love reading because of the style. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is one such.

[LibraryCin]

I don't like literary fiction for this reason and many classics, but when I see reviews that include words/phrases like "lyrical writing", "poetic", stuff like that - and really descriptive stuff - I am far less likely to like the book.

So, I guess that's a style I DON'T like.

Also, not a fan of stream of consciousness.

[Joy D]

I like a literary style, with deeply drawn characters and at least a thin thread of a storyline (not plot-driven but something that draws me to want to read more).

I like authors that use complex words and sentence structures, as long as it doesn't get too elaborate. I enjoy erudite writing.

I enjoy reading books where the author has obviously put some thought into its construction. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is a flow, a rhythm to the use of language and words.

[Robin P]

I am fine with unusual forms of narrative, multiple timelines, stream of consciousness, and otherwise playing around with the reader's expectations. This might be because I was a grad student in literature, so I have experience with a lot of kinds of writing. But I also like a plain old good story! I am fine with 1st or 3rd person. Narration all in present tense is a little weird but after I get into the book, I don't really notice that.

On the other hand, even as an experienced reader, I don't like long pages with no paragraph breaks and no dialogue. I did read through Proust's saga as a college student and I admire Theresa for doing it recently, but he is the worst at having no breaks in the text!

Library Cin, I agree with you about "lyrical" - I have also found I disliked several books marketed as "luminous", whatever that means.

[LibraryCin]

Robin P wrote: "Library Cin, I agree with you about "lyrical" - I have also found I disliked several books marketed as "luminous", whatever that means. ..."

I don't think I've seen a book described by the word "luminous" before! I'm also not sure what it might mean! LOL!

Like you, long pages with no paragraphs and/or dialogue is not a nice experience for me, either.

[Joy D]

I find I can handle stream of consciousness better in audio. A good narrator can break it up in the right places.

[Theresa]

I have had to think about this for a bit, as I don't think I ever really identify style as the reason I may or may not read a book. I love Dickens but also can get deep unto the spare styles of the early 20th Century.

Like others here, I'm a very eclectic reader and will read just about anything, esepcially in fiction. Why I might not like a particular genre or authors has more to do with specific content and elements than their writing style. A rambling exploration of themes and ideas can enchant me just as much as a well plotted mystery.

I can say that I tend not to like styles filled with long florid descriptive passages and endlessly overwrought emotions (those Victorians....). I do read them - but have been known to skim past the endless descriptive sections (did it in Proust, especially in Swann's Way). I dislike dialogue where it isn't clear to me who is speaking. Too much repetition bothers me as well, and this is where my most recent experience with stream of consciousness writing comes in. I read last year Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, each of the stories is written in some form of stream of consciousness style, with Melanctha being the most purely stream of consciousness of the three. I found Melanctha as painful to read as it is to overhear the cellphone conversations of someone on the subway where the entire conversation is repeating the same thing over and over and over again -- usually phrases like "I told you xxxx....you know what I'm sayaing.... get the xxx out of the fridge....I told you etc." For me that's like nails on chalkboard!

If something about the book captures my attention, even if it is stream of consciousness or florid Victorian, I'm likely to give it a try. {Side Note: stream of consciousness was actually invented by Gertrude Stein 20 years before other male writers were credited with it -- who were part of her Paris Salon].

I'm a mood reader, and will pretty much adapt to any style. I do find though that the manner and timing of reading a book will often be determined by its style.

Oh, one last bit - if the style is too reliant on what the french call 'argot' - contemporary colloquialisms, or street language - it can lose me very fast though not always. There's a french writer I had ot read in college named Celine -- Mort a Credit specifically. I found it impossible - it was as if I was trying to read russian. I've run into that in some British fiction, and even American. At least now, if it's an ebook, or I keep a tablet nearby, I can look things up --- I would never have managed to get through A Brief History of Seven Killings without access to the urban online dictionary. After about 100 pages, I had the street and gang language down and pretty much did not have to look anything up. Plus it was only an issue with a couple of character POV. But if the entire work is written that way -- DNF. It becomes too much work to read it.

Some day I really should find an English transaltion of that Celine book and try it.

[Theresa]

When I talk about use of street language etc., I primarily object to it when it is unnecessary, when other elements provide the necessary setting and time period. A Brief History of Seven Killings - it was a critical element in the individual stories, setting, time. Plus James placed it contextually in such a way that you could readily guess what it meant, even if only in general terms.

[KateNZ]

Character driven books for me - even if they don’t have that much of a traditional plot, or a ‘point’ to them, as long as the characters are true to themselves. And the books I enjoy most at the moment are those with humorous observations - either in clever dialogue or told through a character. I like multiple genres and a whole variety of styles from the truly frivolous to the fantastical to the classical to the literary. Lit fic is probably my happiest place (as long as it’s not horribly pretentious!). For non-fiction I like books that are as engaging as if they were a good novel.

I won’t read books that are really badly or carelessly written (lame or unconvincing speech, grammar failings, distracting numbers of typos or plain bad spelling). I struggle with anachronisms particularly in books like Regency romances - especially wrong use of titles, or manners that are hopelessly wrong for the period. If the book is great in other ways, I can look past it to some extent but it will still niggle. And ‘show don’t tell’ is the watchword for me to enjoy something most.

In that vein, I dislike books that are preachy. I respect a wide variety of religious views for instance but if the book appears to be aimed mostly at shoving a religious message (or political or any other type of ideology) down my throat, it rapidly becomes a DNF.