To Learn by Reading

To be a good writer, one has to learn not only by writing, but also by reading. Eventually (once school settles down - haha), I'll probably get around to talking about some of my favorite books and authors here and what I do and don't like about those books. Despite my abhorrence for unnecessary character death, I still enjoy reading the works of William Shakespeare. In case anyone was wondering, CS Lewis is probably my all-time favorite author.

Things I Enjoy in Books:

• Good characters. A book has to have decent characters for the book to be good. As CS Lewis remarked, "we read to know we're not alone" and through the characters of a book, an author can speak to us in ways he or she wouldn't be able to otherwise.
  
• A halfway decent plotline. The more complex the plotline, the better. As a writer, I love making complex lines and intricate threads for characters to follow and I appreciate an author who can do the same and do it well. This is where I especially love the works of JRR Tolkien.
• Believability of a world. It doesn't matter whether it's real (The Andromeda Strain) or historical (Pride and Prejudice or The Three Musketeers) or made-up (Lord of the Rings or Narnia), but the world has to be written well and believable. One thing that I really love about Tolkien is that he goes through all the trouble of making up the languages (okay, so he really loved that stuff) and the races and the stories were just a product of people seeing what he'd done and asking him to write. In creating a different universe, you almost have to do all the background work before writing all about the characters or you'll have a lot of gaps. Trust me... I know from experience.
• I love it when authors think of clever allegorical references or symbolism or interesting names that actually apply to their characters somehow. For example, in CS Lewis' Narnia series, Aslan is Turkish for lion. Quite suiting, considering the fact that he is the Lion. Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is frequently characterized by being tall, dark and handsome. Darcy means dark. Pretty interesting if you ask me... and I'm sure there are other authors who do this; I'm just not sure of any others at the moment.
  

Things That Are Major Pet Peeves in Books:

• Unnecessary character death. Mr. Shakespeare, anyone? Need I say more? Actually, I do like Shakespeare... I just see it as unnecessary to kill off characters without a good reason.
• When authors don't check their facts or make things realistic based on what universe they're operating in. Take The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (scroll down between half and two-thirds way for the part I'm talking about), for example... excellent book and it was written well overall. Unfortunately, I have a knack for random facts that'll only be useful if I happen to get asked to appear on Jeopardy.
• Weak female characters, especially if all the main characters are female and they're all weak. I love the strong female character, like Eowyn from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
• This applies more to fan-fiction and short stories that people write and share online, but I really dislike it when they don't include warnings. If you're going to write romance (whether it's slash or non-slash and especially intense romance), please warn us. Same thing with language, etc.

I suppose that's all I have for now. I enjoyed taking a little bit of time out of my busy studying schedule to write this up and organize my thoughts into a somewhat coherent thought pattern before I go off to eat something for dinner and do more homework.

Hoorah for homework and studying! No really. Oh, this is the site I found the name information from.