this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
60 points (92.9% liked)

Science Fiction

13617 readers
2 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

  1. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  2. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
  5. Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
60
What criteria do you use to determine whether a book is worth your time? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by nkiruanaya@lemm.ee to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

It is not possible to read all the Sci-Fi books out there. So you must have a process for selecting what you do read. Reading a book is an investment in your time. Your time is valuable. No one wants to waste that time reading unworthy books.

I have never codified my criteria. And it has changed and evolved over time. I suspect it will continue to change moving forward, as who I am tomorrow is not who I was yesterday.

What is your criteria to date?

Mine is that it must meet ALL the following criteria, some objective and some subjective.

  • it must have at least 1,000 reviews
  • it must have at least 70% 5-star reviews
  • if after reading about it I get the suspicion that it's a romance disguised as Sci-Fi, I automatically reject it no matter what
  • if it's YA, it really needs to be exceedingly compelling to choose it
  • Space Opera also needs to be exceedingly compelling
  • if I get the feeling it's trying to preach I'll reject it
  • if i get the feeling it has (messaging, strong opinions, or political overtones) about today's societal issues, I probably won't choose it. Not judging; I primarily read for escapism.

I guess that's about it. There's probably more but I just haven't put that much thought into it yet.

I'm very interested in how y'all decide to choose a book to spend your valuable time reading.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Tatters@feddit.uk 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is quite a restrictive list.

I generally go for:

Is it by an author I like? Is it well written? (Judging by samples).

Then I start to read. Normally I will make it to the end, even if some way in I decide I don’t like it that much. Sometimes I will just give up, if it is too tedious, or too many characters/plots I can’t keep track of, or it turns out to be badly written after all.

[–] nkiruanaya@lemm.ee -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Too restrictive? Yes maybe so. There are always exceptions which I haven't verbalized in my post.

Nevertheless, I fear if I used your method, in total I'd spend years reading samples. It's good it works for you though.

I read so much, I just don't have time to invest in reading samples.

UPDATE: I've been wondering why the down votes. I suspect there is tone in my response which I did not intend. I get a lot of recommendations I want to weed through to find something I'm interested in. I couldn't possibly read all the samples. That's all I'm saying.