It’s Friday, so it’s time for the Book Blogger Hop again, hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer. I’ve made my own image from a stock photo (credit: Anna Shvets) to avoid adding images created via generative AI to my blog. Feel free to use it too if you would like!

This week’s prompt is about what grabs you in any given book:

What grabs you and keeps you hooked in a book?

With non-fiction, generally the topic matters most. I’ve found myself interested in food history and fashion history, less because I’m interested in food or fashion per se, and more because you can get a surprising amount of contextual understanding of a given period/culture/etc by reading about its food and fashion. So, when it comes to non-fiction I love books that use things like that to show me a bigger slice of history than you’d expect — liking using poems to do a history of England (like A History of England in 25 Poems), or carpets to do a history of the world (like Threads of Empire, although I haven’t finished that yet).

When it comes to science, given my background I’m pretty much always going to be hooked by human biology, microbiology, virology, etc.

I went with non-fiction first because that felt easier to answer, but when it comes to fiction… I think it comes down to something I complain about sometimes with books that don’t convince me: make me believe there’s a meaningful world outside of your story. I often talk about this when talking about fantasy worlds: I don’t need to see the magic schools of the main city of your fantasy, but a few references to them help flesh out your world. I don’t need to see weird creatures in the story, as long as I know they’re there — or might be.

But really, the same goes for any fiction: I don’t need to know who the girl at the corner shop is dating, but I ought to be able to believe she does something other than ring up the protagonist’s purchases — if not because of detail about her specifically, then just because the background characters as a whole give that impression. We don’t need to know the protagonist’s family tree in detail, but the author ought to know it, or convince us that they do in the way they write and the details they do give.

All of these things help give life to the action and help the reader suspend disbelief.

That said, it’s not the only component of a compelling read for me: the main characters are also super important. I don’t have to like them, and they definitely don’t have to make consistently good choices, but I have to believe they are people who have thoughts and feelings, and whose fates matter.

That said, likeable characters help a lot.

In the end, sometimes sheer writing skill alone can hold me: when I first read Raymond Chandler’s work, I barely followed the mystery plots, but I was all-in on his prose and his “shop-worn Galahad”, a phrase which has stuck with me as being perfect ever since (though it’s far from his only great line).

Maybe the key is just doing something really, really well, and demonstrating it early.