As an average reader, I have read about 250 books. My ten favorite books are:
Lolita, Steppenwolf, 1984, City of Glass, Death of Ivan Ilyich, Picture of Dorian Gray, The Castle, Name of the Rose, Pillars of the Earth, The Road
i.e. basic mainstream classics which everyone else also likes.
In other words, I have zero taste in books.
I just chose to read the classics and those have become my favorites.
It’s like only watching the IMDb Top 250 and then picking your favorite movies from those.
The problem is, it’s hard for me to just read random stuff on a whim.
I have a busy life and books take much longer to finish than movies.
So I go to the recommended top lists and pick from those.
Life is short and there are far too many books out there.
But I guess to develop good taste, you have to read random stuff off the beaten path. You do not develop good taste just by picking what everybody else already agrees on. You develop taste by reading very broadly with the occasional deep-dive into particular areas.
Yet not everyone can be an Eco, a Bloom or a Borges. Most people lead normal lives.
Look at music: A song is 3-4 min.
By the time you finish Moby-Dick, I will have listened to all 200 Beatles songs.
So it is relatively easy to develop good taste in music.
It took me a couple of weeks to listen to all of Brahms’ works.
Reading all of Dickens’ works would take me more than a year.
What do you think, how hard is it to develop good taste in books?
Have you managed to do so?
When would you consider someone to have good taste in books?
by megahui1
23 Comments
why are you putting pressure on yourself to have a “good” taste in books is the question? there’s nothing wrong with liking classics and only reading mainstream books
first of all, you don’t have to read ALL of author’s works to figure out if you enjoy them as an author.
second, if ‘taste’ in books is something important to you, then you should make time for it.
I wouldn’t know. I’m not trying to develop one. I’m just going for what seems to be the next interesting thing.
> i.e. basic mainstream classics which everyone else also likes. In other words, I have zero taste in books.
Why does liking popular books mean you have zero taste in books? I think good taste in books involves reading a variety of genres and authors and if that happens to include popular literature, that popularity doesn’t disqualify a reader from having good taste.
I’ve grown a lot from reading books that I wouldn’t normally read but they came recommended by other people. I think it’s good to be a well-rounded reader who can talk to a random person about X author or Y genre, even if they’re not your favorite.
Some of us just read for enjoyment man
>In other words, I have zero taste in books.
Where would you get that idea? Honestly, I’m puzzled. Who do you think determines what “good taste” is? If you’re reading books you like, you’re doing it right.
There’s a reason popular stuff is popular. Usually, it’s because a lot of people like reading it. And often, that’s an indicator that it’s actually a good book, at least by some measures.
Well, taste is subjective, so what one person considers good taste is not necessarily what another would consider good taste. On subs like this, you sometimes see terms like “popcorn fiction” or “junk food books,” which people use to mean “enjoyable but ultimately unfulfilling reads”; however, some readers genuinely love the books labeled that way and fight against the terms (after all, reading is reading).
Let me know if I’m wrong, OP, but it sounds like what you want is to read books that are well written but little known. That way, you can curate a list of your own personal hits, and if you recommend them to other people, you’re likely to hear back that they loved the book(s) too.
That’s definitely an admirable goal! And philosophers like Edmund Burke would say that you can develop taste over time by doing the work (in this case, reading well and widely), while David Hume laid out several characteristics that made for a good judge (basically, that allowed someone to have good taste). You can look up more on what they said about taste. But I do think a lot of people (myself included, probably) would say that taste is subjective… and as long as some people say that taste is subjective, well, that’s kind of the bottom line. Taste is subjective because people say it’s subjective.
It’s not about taste. UGH. Books are for enjoyment. Read what you like.
“Good taste” in books isn’t really a thing unless you’re trying to put others down. Read what you enjoy.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with “good” taste, but maybe you actually mean knowing what you like enough to search for more of it for yourself rather than going with “trusted” novels?
Focus on identifying the aspects of each book which helped you enjoy it enough to put it in your top ten and then use that as something to blindly (without top 100 lists etc) seek out.
Reading classics, even *basic mainstream classics* as you put it, is exactly how you develop good taste. Now read whatever you want and see how other works compare.
There’s no such thing as good and bad taste, that’s your issue. Everyone is different, tastes are specific and even the smallest styles/tropes of a book can be a deal breaker for many.
Stop relying on the “consensus” to tell if a book is “good.” You need to both *accept* and *embrace* your own taste in books.
Just like food and music, you’re gonna like what you’re gonna like, it’s as simple as that. Your determination to “develop good taste” is complete nonsense, stop feeling guilty about your taste in books.
You uh…you may want to look up the word “subjective” at some point.
Your tastes might not ***align*** with others, but that doesn’t make them invalid or bad.
“You have great taste” is something people with similar tastes say to each other, it’s not an objective quality.
That said, as long as you aren’t reading YA Fiction you’re doing fine. /s
Not to be dismissive of your goals here but I’m confused. Do you want to have good taste or do you want to diversify your reading material? I can’t help but feel like you labelling the ten books you listed as “basic” and indicative of having bad taste is… maybe your actual problem. Why do you think that having good taste means reading books that aren’t critically acclaimed as the best written books? If you want to go outside your comfort zone, that’s fine, but if you’re looking to have good taste, you’re literally there. Do you want to intentionally read poorly written books so you can learn how to identify what makes a bad book bad?
“Good taste” in books only matters if you’re trying to impress or challenge someone.
“Your personal taste” in books is what should matter to you. What do you like about a book – the writing style, the plot, the characters, the themes, the setting, the genre? Why choose reading as a pastime to begin with? Because you enjoy stories, because stories allow you to explore people and worlds you will never be able to experience IRL, because you want to take break from the real world sometimes, or because you want to be able to say/think of yourself as “well-read”?
Most classics become classics because they score high on all the scales. They are written with style as well as substance – the characters are well-developed, interesting, and unique; the setting feels alive and has depth, with a historical-feeling foundation (even in a completely fantastical story); the plot makes sense, isn’t full of holes, and moves at a natural pace; and *at least one or more of all these elements resonates deeply with a whole lot of people.*
“Good taste” is whatever brings you enjoyment. The only time I would say someone doesn’t have “good taste” in books is if they’re reading something they don’t enjoy just because someone told them it was good. Same goes for all other forms of entertainment.
By all means, take recommendations from top 250 lists or whatever, but if you’re not enjoying it, then put it down and pick something else up.
There is no such thing as “good taste” because it’s all subjective. What you may think is good, I may think it’s trash because at the end of the day it’s all just personal opinion.
If you want to read other books, go to a bookstore or library and just walk around and see what catches your eye. Read the back, see if it interests you. It’s honestly not that difficult.
I just follow what I like, just like with everything else in life. As a teenager I liked Ian Fleming’s James Bond, then I heard about John Le Carre and followed that path to Len Deighton and lots of other good, more “literary” spy fiction (and less literary crime thrillers). I liked sci-fi so I started with Philip K Dick and liked the weirder aspects so I followed that to Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov and eventually to less sci-fi but equally weird stuff like Thomas Pynchon. It’s like with music, sometimes I want something deeper, more “respected” to “expand my tastes.” Other times I want to see what’s new, or want to read something by a woman or an author of color or from a different nationality, or want something that’s more fun and lighthearted.
At the end of the day, being well-read is about figuring out what you like and don’t like. Nobody is going to quiz you on your taste, unless you’re hanging out with immature English lit students.
I get what you’re asking, but the way it’s worded is odd. I think you mean “refined” taste, not “good” taste. Seems like you want to get into different genres than what you normally read, but have no idea where to begin. You probably know what kinds of movies you like, so start there. Also, classics are classics for a reason. Nothing wrong with your taste in books just being classics.
You remind me of myself when I was 13-14
What I did was just dive deep into hardcore philosophy books. Eventually I ended up at Beyond Good and Evil and my dumbass underdeveloped brain couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t even enjoy reading for a good few years afterwards.
Moral of the story: go at your own pace.
There’s no such thing as good taste in books. What interests you is different for every person as we all have different life experiences.
Anyone who looks down on the books people read are just snobs. Reading is just a hobby so enjoy it.
You might enjoy reading David Hume’s Essay “Of the Standard of Taste.” In it he argues that what makes for good taste is experience, which allows us to better notice the details of works of art (including literature) and take pleasure in them. In this way WE are setting the standard of taste, by finding the works of art that best interact with our own psychologies, especially with our emotions. Hume then goes on to say that with enough practice, everyone will eventually converge on a set of universally appealing features, and will prefer the works that have those features. The reality of this universal convergence idea is very much up for debate among philosophers and psychologists, but it leads Hume to a really interesting idea, which is that as a way of getting beyond our own limited capacities for experience (exactly the point you’re making) we can look to the works that have stood the test of time (i.e., the classics) to show us what those universally appealing features are that we tend to converge on. So for Hume, classics are EXACTLY an example of good taste, and are in fact a special shortcut way of accessing a huge diachronically shared set of human experiences and literary preferences. Philosophy professor rant over!