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  1. Stormsong07

    Stormsong07 Contributor Contributor

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    What do you think makes a great novel great?

    Discussion in 'Discussion of Published Works' started by Stormsong07, Jun 28, 2017.

    Let's discuss majorly-acclaimed novels/books.
    What is it, exactly, about them, that makes them so good?
    For example:
    What is it about Harry Potter that made so many people fall in love with it?
    What about Lord of the Rings?
    Or The Hunger Games?

    Think about it. What's your most favorite, well-known book? Why do you like it so much?

    I love Harry Potter because of the relationships between the characters. The genuine friendship and the bonds they share. I love the idea of standing up for what's right, even though it's scary or dangerous. Of sticking up for the little guy. The feeling of community amongst the people at Hogwarts, staff and students. And of course, the excitement and adventure of magic.
     
  2. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    There's something to be said about great books being books that people can discover as kids that hold up to an adult reading. These are things that all of the books you mention have in common; books that people read for the first time quite young, pick up a good impression of, then come back to as an adult to read to their kids or just read themselves and find there's more depth there than with a typical kids/teen book. Not to say that I think this is universal, but just that those three were ones you picked out I think show there's something to it there.

    I agree though that compelling characters and relationships are what really make a great book great. That's a very fluffy, non-specific thing, but I really feel that's the critical part. Especially these days we've seen every setting done a million times and while you can make something that feels fresh it'll still be drawing from the older stalwarts to some degree. No, the setting I don't think matters at all. I think that deep, human, sympathetic, believable characters are what you need, and then you need to see them bouncing off each other in interesting ways. That's what makes Silence Of The Lambs great, that's what makes the Game Of Throne books great, that's what even makes Harry Potter great.

    And, actually I think that we can see it best in Harry Potter. They aren't perfect books by any means. There's real flaws (WHY THERE SO MUCH FUCKING QUIDDITCH!) in there, and almost all the later books are vastly too long for their own good. But the characters are sympathetic and interesting and you want to know what is coming next.
     
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  3. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Well, firstly, we have to decide the difference between a Great Novel vs. Popular Novel.

    You gave three examples, only one of which has been around long enough to prove itself as standing the test of time. The other two are new, and while wildly popular, there just hasn't been enough time to know if those novels (HP & HGs) will continue to speak to the masses as the years roll along.

    My question/concern actually encapsulates one thing that I personally think makes a great novel great. Its ability to continue to speak to readers of the future. In that regard, I think Harry Potter stands a better chance than Hunger Games. Harry Potter is about the trials of youth and crossing over into adulthood. That's a universal constant that's always in play. Hunger Games is structured around a very particular slice of angst that is temporally associated with Gen X. Millennials may feel that they own the theme of that story more than Gen X, but Millennials were born into "Panem", already in flower. Gen X was there for the war that created Panem. We were promised the Capitol and then flung to the Districts, just on the cusp of adulthood. All this in metaphor, of course. Regardless, it has yet to be seen if this thematic indictment of history will continue to resonate into future generations or if it will ring flatly as paradigms change.

    In this way, I think DUNE ranks as a "great" genre novel. I have engaged it in many different ways over time, as I have grown and aged. From breathtaking escapism as a child, to political manifesto against the evil manipulations of religion as a young adult, to the rumination of the inner history of me, etc. etc. etc.
     
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  4. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    There's a very long-running thread on this topic which you might find interesting: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/why-rowling-and-king-and-meyer-suceeded.136452/ Your post says "majorly acclaimed" but from your examples, you seem to mean "majorly popular" rather than acclaimed in a literary sense (not a criticism).

    Of the ones you mentioned, I don't rate LOTR, thought The Hunger Games was just okay, and love Harry Potter, so I can only really comment on the latter. Partly, I read it at the right time: I was the same age as Harry when I began, and it was long before the series blew up (which happened in between books 3 & 4). I don't know if I would've loved it had I first read it as an adult.

    What I liked so much:
    - It transported me completely into a different world. J K Rowling really did create a very rich world that felt very real, unlike many fantasy books where the worldbuilding feels very much like worldbuilding, with an author behind it. Maybe part of this is the way Harry is in the same position as the reader - a muggle, introduced late into the wizarding world.
    - The humour.
    - The camaraderie between Harry, Hermione, and Ron. I think many teenagers want that kind of friendship.
    - Harry, like Bella Swan, has very little personality, especially in the early books. This allows him to be a reader-insert character, which is very popular with teens, many of whom aren't comfortable in their own skin and wish they could be someone else.
     
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  5. Stormsong07

    Stormsong07 Contributor Contributor

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    Quite right, @Wreybies, I did say "great" but then used popular novels. There is a difference, I agree. I suppose I'm asking about both, really. What is it that people like about these books that have garnered so much attention, be it recently or proven through the test of time?
     
  6. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    There definitely needs to be a line drawn somewhere to say what exactly has stood the test of time and what hasn't.

    J R R Tolkein and Arthur Conan Doyal are relative newcomers compared to the writers of the 18th and early 19th centuries but I think we can reasonably say that they (along with Nabakov and William Golding and many other much more modern writers) have stood the test of time. I don't know where that line is, but I don't think it's that far in the past. Books that are old enough that someone who read them when they came out hands them down to their kids has crossed that line I think; maybe that doesn't make every such book great but that's long enough to show that a book has continued to live in people's imagination and that's what really matters here. As long as the books for were first written before today's reading age kids (say secondary school age so about 12 years) were born then you can say they've stood the test of time. After all, given how many books there are out there, for someone who doesn't know much about books to go and pick up one that was written before they were born (before the internet in the case of Harry Potter) then it must have something going on.

    As for popular books; I think that a great book must be a popular book at least at some point. Not necessarily at any specific point in it's life, but at some point it needs that public acclaim to it. If it's a book most people have never heard of then I don't think it reaches truly great. There are very many non-great books that are popular, but all great books should be popular. I also would go further than that and say that a great book is one that you can reasonably read for pleasure, not just for elucidation. There's plenty of books that have a great message but that aren't really good stories.

    So; to lay this out I think a great book must be:

    1) Popular at some point in it's history.
    2) Old enough for at least one new generation of readers to discover it.
    3) Have good characters.
    4) Have a good story as well as a good message.
    5) Written comprehensibly (No Figgans Wake on this list).
     
  7. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Not unlike @Tenderiser's comment concerning Harry being an easy reader-insert, Paul Atreides was my reader insert at just the right moment when he and I intersected. I was fifteen when I read that novel for the first time, so was Paul when we meet him before his trial with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. He was me and I was him. Suspicious, alert, watching, and who didn't want to feel as clever and brave as Paul Atreides in his attempt to use the voice on the Reverend Mother? Such power! Such portent. Such potential.

    And this is what I mean about speaking to readers of the future: Frank Herbert is a contemporary of the Beat Writers, born in 1920. He didn't write DUNE for little 1980's me. He wrote it for the very earliest iteration of the generation before me, Early First Wave Boomers. They would have been in their late teens when this novel was published. It was meant to speak to them. He created a lavish universe of power and wealth where even the leathery Fremen of the Arakeen desert had massive wealth all around them in the form of Spice.... Melange... And yet I was able to find a connection in Paul in 1985, twenty years after first publication. Little Paul Atreides, sardonic and almost Goth in his disdain for the decadence around him. Where Hunger Games indicts the past, the broken promise made to my generation, DUNE comes to us from the past and warns us about that future promise. It warns us about this path of decadence that grows too huge on an unstable base. That's why I loved and continue to love that novel that I have read more times than I can count. The whole series. Because it plays out and fits with the structure of history that was told to me as history, that I experienced as my personal life, and now watch travel past me into the future. The novel is 52 years old now, and still it rings with portent and things left to say and predict about our future path.

    Will we learn?

    Must we have a God Emperor for us to see?

    I always warn that it's a mistake to engage Science Fiction as predictive because it rarely ever is, but that doesn't mean that it never comes spookily close to seeing into that crystal ball of the future. :wtf:
     
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  8. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

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    I think it's impossible to say there's a single quality that marks a Great Novel. Different novels are great for different reasons. I can't list all the relevant qualities or which books exemplify which (this is, after all, not a Ph.D dissertation), but I think they would include the following (I have included an example or two of each):

    Style
    Ulysses, by James Joyce
    The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
    Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
    The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Characters
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
    A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
    Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

    Scope/Setting
    Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
    Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
    Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

    Philosophical Import

    Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
    The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

    Influence
    Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand (I disgree with its philosophy, but I can't deny its influence)
    The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

    There's nothing new on the list for the reason @Wreybies mentioned. Also, this is merely my opinion mixed with a couple of those "100 Greatest Novels" lists you come across sometimes.

    Also, I think this thread should not turn into a Great Books thread. We should stick to what we think makes a Great Book and include examples (if we think it helps) only to illustrate what we're talking about.
     
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  9. thirdwind

    thirdwind Member Contest Administrator Reviewer Contributor

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    For me, a great book is one that communicates something insightful using beautiful language. Some of my recent favorites include Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and Eliot's "The Waste Land." The one thing they have in common aside from their beautiful use of the English language is that they all stuck with me long after I finished reading them.
     
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  10. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I think that Harry Potter is likely to survive because three people (I'm the third) think of three different themes for it. That means that it's...rich? Is that the word I want?

    To me, Harry Potter is about longing for and finding a place in the world. It's the same theme that's repeated through every Rumer Godden novel that I've read.

    To make the fourth, @Tenderiser, is one of the things that you listed the primary appeal that you see, or is it all of them?

    (Edited a bunch.)
     
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  11. OJB

    OJB A Mean Old Man Contributor

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    My Top 3,

    1- The Divine Comedy. For me, the Divine Comedy central story is a love story. The Pilgrim (Dante) travels across the three plains of the afterlife in order to be with his beloved (Beatrice). I love the theme, the allegories, the symbolism, the Allusions, and the story itself. Plus, -this might be my Dune moment @Wreybies - when Virgil is sent back to Hell, after guiding and protecting Dante for the first two books, I was just shocked -it was the moment I knew I wanted to write stories.

    2- Paradise Lost. It is no secret that I have a special love for English Blank Verse, and I love the technical skill Milton shows in Paradise Lost; however, the moment where I realized that Paradise Lost was something special is when I came across one of the most memorable scenes in the book: Satan is giving a speech about how God is an unforgiving Tyrant, yet Satan is so blinded by his hatred for God, he doesn't realize that the Gates of Hell are unlocked, and he is free to leave (hence implying he could obtain God's forgiveness and return to Heaven.) It was the first time I really saw how powerful Irony could be in a story.

    3- Lord of The Rings. I have such a love for Lord of the Rings. What I love about Lord of the Rings is that it has a very complex story structure that is built around a very simple story goal: Destroy the one ring. I often refer to Lord of the Rings in terms of Story Structure because I feel it is the example people should look at when they want to build a complex story -while still having a clear story goal.

    So, in essence, what I think makes great stories is when you a writer who creates something engaging and imaginative, but does so with the tools of the craft (Meter, Irony, foreshadowing, Allegory, theme, only to name a few.)

    But few not, I do read a lot of horror and Erotica as well (I am not all high literature): Even in Erotica, there is a skill set in writing sexual tension where even the reader is screaming at the book for the two characters to take off their clothes. So yes, I really like seeing writers use the tools of the trade.
     
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  12. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    Hmm, I don't really know. I don't think of stories in terms of theme, so if asked what Harry Potter was about, 'finding a place in the world' or 'the trials of youth' wouldn't appear on my list.

    I think its primary appeal for me would be the first thing I mentioned - it transported me to another world. The escapism factor.
     
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  13. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    I think what makes a great story great, is that it is timeless
    and can be read multiple times and still have a new meaning
    each time. IDK.
     
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  14. Stephen1974

    Stephen1974 Active Member

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    Character development and interaction through dialogue.
    I hate descriptive writing. Its all about the interaction between good characters for me.
    In books that are largely descriptive I tend to 'fast forward' and generally will never return to them. Books with great character interaction stay on my shelf and get read again and again.
     
  15. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I suppose "theme" isn't what I mean. Except it is. Except it isn't. That is, when people talk about "What's your theme?" or "What's your message?" or, worst in my mind, "What's your moral?" I get twitchy and run away. But I distinguish that from repeated...see, even though it simultaneously annoys me, I can't avoid the word 'theme'!...repeated ideas that seem to keep coming up.

    So, yep, four different areas of major appeal. (And counting.) I'm comfortable calling that richness. Even if a book isn't glorious or profound, richness is a thing.
     
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  16. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    Richness is an excellent word. I do think the Harry Potter books have a lot of richness.

    Another series I loved and have re-read over and over is His Dark Materials, and I'll always remember the review quote on the cover: "A rich casket of wonders." Summed it up perfectly.

    I can also apply 'richness' to other popular works I love: The Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy of Five, for example.
     
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  17. Robert Musil

    Robert Musil Comparativist Contributor

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    Do you think that another way of saying "richness" might be something like "efficiency"? Or "economy". I don't necessarily mean fast pacing or sparse, Hemingway-esque prose. Just packing a lot of meaning into a given number of words.
     
  18. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    Not for me. I do think it's about packing in a lot of details and story and worldbuilding, making me feel like I'm immersed in another world. But I don't think the authors I mentioned do it particularly efficiently. Most of the Harry Potter books are 3x as long as the genre standard for YA fantasy. His Dark Materials books were also far longer than the genre standard. Hitchhiker's breaks the mould, as they were shorter than most adult sci-fi.
     
  19. Stephen1974

    Stephen1974 Active Member

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    Whats good about the length of the potter books is that they are not long winded in the process. I tend to find that long books are puffed out by long boring descriptive prose. You don't get that in potter. Sometimes you do get drawn out scenes that, to an adult, would seem like the bleeding obvious is being said, but you have to remember this is a kids books, and they need a little more promting.
     
  20. OJB

    OJB A Mean Old Man Contributor

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    I've not read this series yet, but I want to dig into it.
     
  21. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    I think you'll enjoy it. :) A lot of allegory and imagery in there. It actually follows many of the conventions of an epic poem, which you might enjoy if you've read Homer/Virgil.
     
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  22. OJB

    OJB A Mean Old Man Contributor

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    Yes, actually it's based (in some aspects) off of Paradise Lost. The Title 'His Dark Materials' is from Paradise Lost.

    -

    "Into this wild Abyss
    The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--
    Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
    But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
    Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
    Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain
    His dark materials to create more worlds,--
    Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend
    Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,
    Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
    He had to cross."

    -John Milton, Paradise Lost.
     
  23. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    That's right, I recall now other verses from Paradise Lost at the beginning of chapters.

    I haven't read it in a few years and I think it's time!
     
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  24. OJB

    OJB A Mean Old Man Contributor

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    I know this because I've studied Paradise Lost in and out, so many works have been inspired by it: Frankenstein, His Dark Materials, Anything William Blake, even more recent, Riddley Scott's Prometheus and Alien: Covenant has elements based off of it.

    It just amazes me how one book could inspire people to create music, movies, poems, and books, -people from different genres and eras.-

    Sorry, I nerd out when I talk about PL or Divine Comedy :p
     

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