# how do you know whether a book is good or not



## Ciuri Di Badia (May 3, 2012)

i have come across many new books in the recent past. i have been wondering how i can gauge whether a book is good or bad without having to go through it. is there a way to gauge a book? please share with me.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

First you have to qualify and quantify your definition of what is "good" in terms of books.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Agreeing with NogDog, we need your definition of good before we can give you an answer.


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## Debbie Bennett (Mar 25, 2011)

For me - when I know I should be going to sleep at night, but I can't stop reading. When the characters are with me even when I'm not reading and I'm imagining them as real people.

I'm reading a YA fantasy series at the moment and it's *awesome*. I just can't stop thinking about it and it's taking over my life. I don't want to get to the end because there won't be any more then...

That's good by my definition!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

DebBennett said:


> For me - when I know I should be going to sleep at night, but I can't stop reading. When the characters are with me even when I'm not reading and I'm imagining them as real people.
> 
> I'm reading a YA fantasy series at the moment and it's *awesome*. I just can't stop thinking about it and it's taking over my life. I don't want to get to the end because there won't be any more then...
> 
> That's good by my definition!


I think Ciuri is asking about how to determine whether a book is good before actually reading the whole thing.

And I don't think there's one definitive answer; but examining the cover, the blurb, the Look Inside, the sample the reviews, discussions by people who like the same kinds of books you do, say, here or on Goodreads, will all help. I do some of these, not all of them.

Betsy


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

The only way I can think of is to watch for reviews on a book by people with whom you find your taste in reading matches. This means, paying close attention to who posts the reviews and judging their review to your own experience after reading the same book. If you find a few people who consistently echo your own opinion, then start watching what they read.

Truth is, it is pretty hard to find such a situation. Partly, because I find that while two people may love a particular book, they may love that book for different reasons. It is a very subjective thing.

I would use a site, such as GoodReads.com, and look up books that I know I already love and see what people said about each book. If I find people who have described a book in the same way I would and they have done the same for other books in my list, then I know that person shares a similar taste in reading to myself. I would then look at books that person has recommended and I have not yet read and see if my theory works.

Ultimately, the best way to judge a book for yourself is the read it through—exactly what you were hoping to avoid. If you are concerned about buying a book and discovering you didn't like it, then the best route you can go is to your public library and borrow the book in question.


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## moirakatson (Jan 11, 2014)

WDR said most of my suggestions! (Goodreads, reviews, difficulty, etc.) I would add the following, from my own experience: one difficulty is that I can determine from the available excerpt whether or not the writing appeals, but beyond that, it's difficult to know if the plot arc/characters/etc will satisfy.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Nothing I've tried is foolproof: I have left unfinished books that readers whose opinions I respect raved about, and I've raced through books that others have panned.

One thing I do when I'm not sure up front is to look at some of the not-so-good reviews to see if there is a common thread concerning why some readers did not like a book If any of those issues are similar to things that often cause me to give up on a book, then I move on to the next possibility, or at least give that book a more critical going-over.


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## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

WDR said:


> Ultimately, the best way to judge a book for yourself is the read it through-exactly what you were hoping to avoid.


This. I don't truly KNOW until it is too late.

A pretty good shortcut to a decision for fiction is whether you've read fiction by that author before and liked it. If the answer to both these questions is yes, you may like the book. If the answer to the first question is yes and the answer to the second question is no, you probably won't like it.

An inferior shortcut but still useful is if someone whose taste in books is proven by experience to be similar to yours has read the book and recommends it.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

To me a book is "good" if I liked and enjoyed it when reading it. So "good" is going to be different from person to person. 

But I have a vetting system that works for me. It gives me a much higher percentage of success in liking the books I read. The vetting consists of various things and each part of it is flexible. It can be one or more or all of the following. And other stuff I am not thinking off right now. Not in any order. 

Reviews, goodreads matching tates with friends, publishers, is it back list, info about the author if needed, cover professional, sale price, sub genres, online genre specific blogs, forums with like minded readers, genre magazine, readers recommendations, readers, readers.  

It is a sum of different things and it basically ensures to a high percentage that I am going to like the book I am reading. 

Nothing is fool proof and I still get some books I don't like as much, but over all my vetting is working. I don't really fly blind so to speak with books. I don't just grab a random book without doing at least some vetting.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

You're never going to like every single book you pick up. Without being psychic, there is no way to be 100% sure you'll like a particular book. But for me, I've found a pretty good vetting system which excludes books with unprofessional looking covers, blurbs that don't interest me or seem poorly written, unreviewed books (unless it's an ARC from NetGalley but the publisher/author has to pay a fee to have their book featured on there so they tend to be at a certain professional level - plus it's free for me so I haven't lost much), books which are criticized for things which I know would also bug me, or books which seem poorly written as per the sample.

But most of all, sorry to all the self published authors out there, I stopped buying cheap/free self published books for the most part. I'm not saying self published books are never good, or that books from major published can't be bad, but my ratio of books which I enjoyed over those that I didn't went significantly up when I stopped impulse buying cheap, self published books. I will still buy the occasional one IF it meets the above criteria (has a good cover, good blurb, good sample, good reviews, etc) but not like before.


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## Mel Odious (Feb 29, 2012)

If it has boobs on the cover it will be illiterate.  If it has clowns on the cover it will be disturbing.  

Otherwise, of course, you can't judge a book by its cover.


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## Istvan Szabo Ifj. (Dec 13, 2013)

The answer is; if I can enjoy the actual work it's good in my eyes. Period. The problem is that lately many tries to fit for the expectation of others and simply says that something is good or bad, because others expect them to do so. But knowing what is right or wrong is not rocket science. You have your own personal taste. If you enjoy the book, it's good. If can't enjoy it, it's not. It's really matter what others think about it. Reading and enjoying books is about discovering new worlds and stories. If you like it, you like it, but if you can't enjoy it, it's really matter what thousands of reviews or a list will tell you, you won't. Reviews, lists, nothing can set your personal taste. Only you can tell what you like.


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## edmunddewight (Jan 28, 2014)

We all judge books by their covers.... at first. I decent cover lets me know what genre it is and sometimes if it's a good cover I assume that some effort was put into the book. Of course I've read books I loved with horrible covers too.
I read the description and, if they have it, the look inside (boy is that a godsend for modern readers) 
If I'm really wishy washy at that point I order the sample and decide from that.
For me, if the writing is taut, draws me along, and introduces a situation during the opening that gives me a clue to the book without making me feel like I'm reading something my 7 year old wrote or a rambling travelogue, I'll give it a try. 
YMMV


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

Does it read well from the outset? That is very important to me. It doesn't have to be high literature, but the writer has to show a skill with language.

Does it capture your attention quickly? Doesn't have to be a car chase ... a clever observation will just as easily do the trick.

How quickly and how willingly do you immerse yourself into the writer's world? How quickly is your disbelief suspended? Reading a good book is not a passive thing but an _experience_, like following a White Rabbit into a deep hole. And the best kinds of writers leave you unaware you're even doing it.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I agree with others who've said the only way to really KNOW is to read it right to the end.  And, even then, one person might say, 'yes, it was good' and others might say, 'no, it wasn't good'. 

I've actually had it happen to me a couple of times that I was reading a book and thought it was really good right up to the very end when it just sort of fizzled and I was left with a feeling of "huh?" It was a 4-5 star read all the way through until it ended when it ultimately became something between 2 and 3.

And there are others that were kind of slow to get going but once they did, boy did they go and I ended up thinking they were quite good.


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## PaulLev (Nov 2, 2012)

NogDog said:


> One thing I do when I'm not sure up front is to look at some of the not-so-good reviews to see if there is a common thread concerning why some readers did not like a book If any of those issues are similar to things that often cause me to give up on a book, then I move on to the next possibility, or at least give that book a more critical going-over.


That's an excellent strategy.


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## JamesHutchings (Feb 27, 2011)

Isn't that what reviews are for?


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## H.S.Bajwa (Feb 2, 2014)

It's always better to read the first few chapters to see if the book falls into your category of good. Of course you'll like some genres more than others, so it really depends upon your choice.


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

H.S.Bajwa said:


> It's always better to read the first few chapters to see if the book falls into your category of good&#8230;


I must agree.

A few people have commented they can tell whether or not a story is good in the first few pages. Truth is, the only thing you will learn in a few pages is if the writing or the editing was really bad.

I have read many books that I can only describe as being slow to get started. The first chapter or two were a bit slow, but once the main story got started, they were hard to put down. One book, it took me nearly three months to get through the first two chapters because it was just not going anywhere. The opening of the story was kind of like watching an episode of _The Love Boat_, where the characters of that episode are all boarding the ship and being introduced but there is no story going on. Then I finally reached the point where the true story got started, I just couldn't put down the book! It was so good, I went out and bought the next two books in the series so I'd have them immediately on hand to pick and and start reading the moment I finished the first. Each book just kept getting better and better.

I always make it a point to give a story a chance and do my best to read as far into it as I can. They say if a book doesn't have you by the end of the third chapter, it probably isn't going to happen.


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## lmroth12 (Nov 15, 2012)

Well, there's a difference between "good" and "interesting." A good book has excellent writing skills and well-defined characters with a plot that keeps you turning the pages and a believable ending. But an interesting book is one that you _personally_ want to keep reading. I use the example of *Moby Dick * a lot: I found it boring, yet it's considered a great classic. Unusual for me to dislike it as I love classic books, yet I never made it past the first third of the book because I kept waiting for the action to start, and I finally gave up. (I was just going through an Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne phase at the time and was used to having something actually HAPPEN in the opening chapters of a book.) So for myself I use the Look Inside feature and if the book has no obvious spelling or punctuation errors, the characters already seem like real people and not stereotypes, and the plot description intrigued me enough to open the Look Inside feature, then I cut the author some slack and classify it as a good book. But if reading the sample chapters aren't enough to lure me into buying it, then I don't classify it as an interesting book. And that is certainly not the fault of the author, but is purely a matter of personal taste.


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## Ciuri Di Badia (May 3, 2012)

thank you guys, i think that by looking at the cover f a book, you can have a rough idea of how it will be. good books generally(but not always) have good covers.


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## Andrew Michael (Feb 17, 2014)

This is always the problem. If people could adequately answer this, they would be more than rich. I nearly always go on recommendation and then once I find an author I like, I seek out everything they've done. The alternative is just too overwhelming. Also, a friend taught me a formula which works pretty good. You take your age and subtract it from 100. That number represents the number of pages. If you're not interested in the book by that number of pages, stop reading, you're wasting your life. 

That let's you off the hook after you've given it the benefit of the doubt. 

Also Audible is great because you can return titles you didn't like for up to a year. That way, I am willing to try new authors I haven't read before. Often I return them. Sometimes I find a gem.


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

Ciuri Di Badia said:


> thank you guys, i think that by looking at the cover f a book, you can have a rough idea of how it will be. good books generally(but not always) have good covers.


I really prefer it when the cover of a book shows a scene from inside the book. Conversely, it drives me nuts when a generic painting is used and it doesn't really have anything to do with what's inside the book.

Often, the cover does catch my eye and get me to buy a book. But there have been occasions when it did just the opposite. Anne McCaffrey's _The Crystal Singer_ was just such a situation. Oddly, it was Michael Whelan's cover that turned me off; odd, because I'm a big fan of Whelan's work and it was his art that got me into reading McCaffrey's _Dragonriders of Pern_ series. I didn't care for the pose or look of the _Crystal Singer_ image and passed it by. Fortunately, I picked up the book in the library and discovered that _The Crystal Singer_ was an excellent story.


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## luvmy4brats (Nov 9, 2008)

Over the years since getting my kindle, I've made what I call "book friends".. Friends that have the same taste in books that I do... If they recommend a book to me, I'll read it and 90% of the time I love it. I also tend to stick with authors I enjoy.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## jeremy young (Feb 28, 2014)

You can't judge a book by it's cover.

And you can't know if it is good or not until you have read it.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

jeremy young said:


> You can't judge a book by it's cover.


I judge books by their covers all the time, it is generally the first step in my vetting process.



> And you can't know if it is good or not until you have read it.


Unless it is free so you know it is never good because you don't finish it ever? I'm trying to connect your comments from the "Do you always finish a book?" thread. From that thread it sounds like you know a book is not good just because it was free.


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## jeremy young (Feb 28, 2014)

crebel said:


> Unless it is free so you know it is never good because you don't finish it ever? I'm trying to connect your comments from the "Do you always finish a book?" thread. From that thread it sounds like you know a book is not good just because it was free.


Using question marks when making statements is poor rhetoric.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

jeremy young said:


> Using question marks when making statements is poor rhetoric.


Sorry, I am just a dumb reader who obviously does not have your excellent facility with words and sentence construction. I won't attempt to ask you any more questions about your comments, and you can skip my posts or put me on ignore so you won't have to read my poor rhetoric.


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## 1131 (Dec 18, 2008)

crebel said:


> I judge books by their covers all the time, it is generally the first step in my vetting process.


I've bought books because of their cover many times (as in didn't know anything else about the book and bought it anyway) and enjoyed them. There have also been covers that make me want to buy them but I know it isn't a genre I like so I avoid it. Reviews, blurbs, covers, recommendations, they all help me pick good books but they are not fool proof.


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## Daniel Dennis (Mar 3, 2014)

I could go on and on about things I look for, but for me specifically, I know I've got a good one when I force myself to get out every day at lunch and either sit and read in the sun or walk to a nearby quiet restaurant to read for an hour during my lunch break.


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## Ciuri Di Badia (May 3, 2012)

i see your point guys. 

we all need to find good books to read.

however, we need to find a perfect way to identify these books so that we can be able to find the best ones.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Ciuri Di Badia said:


> i see your point guys.
> 
> we all need to find good books to read.
> 
> however, we need to find a perfect way to identify these books so that we can be able to find the best ones.


I don't think there will ever be a perfect way to identify good books, because readers will never always agree on what is "best". Thank goodness we have so many choices to fill our varied wants. You just have to find the system that works well for you _most_ of the time.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Agree with crebel.  Perfection is unobtainable.  And what works for one won't work for another.  Besides, everyone likes different stuff.  After 50 years of reading, my system is, however, darn near foolproof.


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## Mark Young (Dec 13, 2010)

If I have to keep asking myself. "Is this worth my time?" then the book is not worth it.


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## bookhero (Mar 5, 2014)

Ciuri Di Badia said:


> i have come across many new books in the recent past. i have been wondering how i can gauge whether a book is good or bad without having to go through it. is there a way to gauge a book? please share with me.


I've found BookVibe.com pretty helpful (http://alerts.bookvibe.com) it shows you what everyone is saying about the book on Twitter. It's usually enough to let me see if I want to start reading the book. Annoyingly they don't have a search function on their main site yet, only this author's portal.

If you want more, you can try googling the book title with "bookvibe" which often works and then you see some more cool info including which influencers are tweeting about it and which of your friends are saying stuff. This is a pretty typical page: http://www.bookvibe.com/book/The_Fault_in_Our_Stars/513363

Hope you find it helpful!


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## Ciuri Di Badia (May 3, 2012)

a good book should be worth your time. you should be able to identify this from the looks.


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## Anne Berkeley (Jul 12, 2013)

I think you don't until you read it.  I've started books or series and read the reviews before I've purchased, but the majority of the time I usually end up liking them, despite the bad reviews many people give them.  Everybody has their own opinion.


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

I see a cover as a way to eliminate a bad book rather than a way to find a good book. If a cover looks sloppy, that's a decent indication that the book isn't good. The most reliable method is word of mouth from people whose tastes you know match your own.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

I'm all over the map when it comes to choosing what I think will be a "good book" for me. It truly is deeply subjective. 

Yes, a really bad cover can turn me off. 
Yes, the read inside sample might not appeal to me. 
Yes, reviews can influence my buying.

But I'm all alone with the book when deciding on subject matter. It won't be a "good book" for me if it's super dark in tone with graphically rendered violence or cruelty or if it's non-stop explicit sex with no story. I can read and enjoy all of these elements (dark, violence, cruelty, sex) in a book as long as they aren't *all* the book is about. If they are that is a "bad book" for me.

Mostly I can filter to my satisfaction. But overall I agree you can't know it's a "good book" until you've read it to the end. And you know it's a _*really*_ good book when you find yourself thinking about it for days afterward and you're touting it to all your friends.


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## Ciuri Di Badia (May 3, 2012)

Yes sheedy. i agree with you. a good book should be based on subject and the equality of the content.

we need to rank books by this criteria so that other readers can know what to expect


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Ciuri Di Badia said:


> Yes sheedy. i agree with you. a good book should be based on subject and the equality of the content.
> 
> we need to rank books by this criteria so that other readers can know what to expect


I think you mean *quality* not *equality* but, even so, who is this 'we' that you think should define it? Why should YOUR or anyone else's judgement of the quality be important to _me_? I can make my own judgement. I can read the blurb the publisher puts out. I can read reviews, or talk to other readers, and get an idea from _many_ people about the book. Maybe I've read other books by this author. All those things may provide me an _expectation_ about the quality. But, ultimately, I may still read it and decide that, in MY opinion, it's just not a good book. And everyone else in the world saying it is will not change my opinion. Sorry.

Different people look for different things. What's enjoyable to one is boring to another. Example: romance novels tend to exasperate me -- they're too predictable for me. For others, that predictability is exactly what they LOVE about them and a 'romance' novel will get _scathing_reviews if there isn't a 'happily ever after' ending. Me: I don't want to know the ending before I begin. So making ME, for example, the arbiter of 'quality' isn't going to make ANY romance reader happy.  Actually, it wouldn't make most people happy because, while I tend to generally like most books I read fairly well (though there are a some I think are really bad), there are only a VERY FEW I think are really super fantastically great books. So MY list of 'quality' books is really very very short.


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## Guest (Mar 23, 2014)

I can usually get a good feel for a book by reading the sample and blurb. I also peruse reviews, particularly looking for industry and book blog reviews. I'm not afraid to be the first of my friends to try a book, though I will say there were times a book didn't particularly grab me and my friends insisted I read, so I did. Unfortunately, those books usually still don't grab me in the end. On the other hand, many times my friends recommend a book, and I think it sounds good. Often those books are. So these days I more use friend recommendations to learn about books, but I use my own judgment to decide if it's the kind of book I want to buy and will enjoy.


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## josephdevon (Feb 6, 2014)

crebel said:


> I don't think there will ever be a perfect way to identify good books, because readers will never always agree on what is "best". Thank goodness we have so many choices to fill our varied wants. You just have to find the system that works well for you _most_ of the time.


I don't know. I can imagine a not-to-far-off future where a book emits, like, a mood cloud, and you can step into the mood cloud and it gives you a general idea of how readers felt when reading that book. And then you can decide if that's what you're in the mood for or not.

Though, yeah, until the mood cloud comes along we're probably stuck with pesky imperfection.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

jeremy young said:


> You can't judge a book by it's cover.


Then why have one? I will admit that some books with great covers are terrible reads and vice versa. But a cover is a marketing tool and like it or not, readers use covers to look for the genres and types of books they will like. Beyond that, in my experience, an unprofessional looking cover on a self published book will usually wind up being poorly written - there are exceptions but as a general rule, I look for professional looking covers as part of my vetting process. If you truly believe that a book can't be judged by it's cover, why isn't your book just a plain white cover with plain black text for the title? If no book could be judged by it's cover, the covers would not exist since there would be no point to them.



> Using question marks when making statements is poor rhetoric.


And insulting readers is a poor way to sell books. Good luck with that.


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## Ciuri Di Badia (May 3, 2012)

I agree with you guys. you have to bench mark one book by another based on the storyline and the strength of the characters. this will give you a way to know which book is better than the other before opening and reading it.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

For me, the "look inside" is the deciding factor about whether to buy a book. If I reach the end of the free sample and need to know what happens next, I usually hit the buy button. Most of the time, the rest of the story turns out to be good.


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## sstroble (Dec 16, 2013)

Ciuri Di Badia said:


> i have come across many new books in the recent past. i have been wondering how i can gauge whether a book is good or bad without having to go through it. is there a way to gauge a book? please share with me.


If it's a book from amazon, I read the sample.
If it's a book from the library or bookstore or yard sale, I open to a random page and read. Seems like it does not take long to know if it's one for me or not. Whether it's good or not is so subjective that it's in the eyes of the beholder. 
"One man's treasure is another man's trash."


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I would say for me, it depends on my mood.    Now I have certain rules I follow when picking out a book.  One is the cover, two and this is the big one, the blurb,  I will not read anything that starts with #1 where ever  or so and so said this book is the greatest thing since sliced bread, now as to content, what am I in the mood for?    
If I want thriller/romance I know where to go, if I want unique I know where to go. etc.
I do not need someone else telling me what is good or bad.
Really you thought Book A was wonderful, oh heck I couldn't get through chapter one.


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## JeanetteRaleigh (Jan 1, 2013)

I read the first page.  I can usually tell whether I'll like the book from page one.  I don't like reading on a computer screen so I'm a lot harder on a book using the 'Look Inside feature' than a book I'm perusing in the library.


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## Guest (Apr 15, 2014)

I judge books by covers 

But in all seriousness, my method is:

Cover/Title catch my eyes
Blurb sounds good
Opening pages immediately hook me in.

At that point, I buy, and most of the time I enjoy


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## jyarrow (Aug 15, 2010)

My friends often send me recommendations or won't stop talking about a book until I've read it and can join in on the discussion. I look in the book description/blurb for themes that interest me - for any indication that the story had depth and will make me think, as well as feel, in a new way.


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## rmbooks (Sep 19, 2011)

It is certainly subjective, that's for sure. I would have to say that I do rely on reviews from both Amazon and Goodreads. That being said, the blurb has a lot to do with weather or not I'll purchase. If I'm on the fence, I'll download a sample first. I've downloaded some stinkers of late, even with good reviews, I just couldn't connect.


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## ZSachs (Apr 15, 2014)

"Good" is subjective. 

I've had the experience of loving a book at one point in my life, picking it up again, and despising the writing style. Also the reverse. A lot depends on my mood. I read eclectically, and when I discover a writer I love I may read everything that writer has written. Sometimes I go on a binge and read a lot of mysteries and thrillers, biographies, or historical fiction. At other times I may read only nonfiction and focus on a particular topic. 

Because I write, I often edit while I read--not a good sign. If a book grabs me, and I get caught up in the story and characters (without editing as I read), chances are I'll enjoy the book and read to the end. Regarding writing style, my criteria is much tougher for fiction than for nonfiction. When it comes to nonfiction, I tend to look at the writer's credentials and ignore the writing style.

Before I buy a book, I read reviews to get an idea of the book's content; reviews are subjective and often entertaining. Usually, unless I'm familiar with a writer's work, I sample it--either by using the "look inside" feature on Amazon, downloading a sample, or flipping through pages in a bookstore. Often, I'll read a book (and buy it) based on a trusted friend's recommendation.


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## JeanetteRaleigh (Jan 1, 2013)

I wanted to add.  There are certain authors that I refuse to read on the weekdays.  The mark of a great book is one that cannot be put down.  

Sharon Shinn:  I thought to read a chapter or so of Angelica and at 5:00 o'clock the next morning while closing the book, wondered how it got so early.
Tina Wainscott/Jamie Rush:  Her books always make me stay up at least an hour past bedtime. (And I like sleep!)
Mary Balogh:  Sure, it's a regency romance and I have a fair guess as to what will happen...and yet...I keep reading.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

My criteria is basically this: If I like or love the book, it's good. If I don't like the book, it's not good, no matter how many units it has sold or how many awards it has won. 

I always read the first line--at least--even if I don't like the cover. And if I get that feeling like I want to keep going . . . sold!


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

My experience has been that covers have nothing to do with my possible enjoyment of the book. I ignore them. I seems as if most cover illustrators haven't read any of the book.

If I'm considering a book by an author that is unfamiliar to me, I look at the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. Generally I pay more attention to the 1-and 2-star ratings than I do of the 4- and 5-star ratings.

If it's a mystery title, I look at the comments on half-a-dozen mystery fiction blogs I follow.

Even so, I'm deciding if a book is worth trying out, not whether is is good or not. That will have to wait for some undetermined amount of time reading it.

Mike


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## Ciuri Di Badia (May 3, 2012)

yes, a good book is not necessarily the one with a good cover but the one with great content


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## barbie25 (May 17, 2014)

I find book reviews very helpful in telling whether a book is good or not.  However, what is good book to a reader is purely personal so I recommend you seek second opinion from different book reviewers.  

I hope this helps


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## RockyGrede (Apr 19, 2013)

The cover usually draws me in. And the book description.


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