First and foremost, obviously this is a question that is ENTIRELY subjective and there isn't one correct answer. Plenty of people only want to read for raw fun without thinking too hard and/or feeling like homework and that's TOTALLY fine! Others enjoy taking a bit of an academic approach and don't mind challenging themselves to read things they don't always enjoy or understand right off the bat. Others fall anywhere in between those two points or beyond them. Like I said, objectively subjective question here.
I'm asking purely because I'm curious what the general proportions are in any one direction, not to assist in my own decision making for answering the question myself.
I'm currently reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, my first time reading Woolf and really my first venture into modernist literature overall. Having most recently been reading a bunch of more recently-published fantasy books mixed with a bunch of Vonnegut, Woolf's style is causing a serious bout with literary whiplash. The intentional run-on sentences and prolonged bouts of deep personal musings, intermittent pieces of speaking which DON'T include quotation marks, and swaps between character perspectives which aren't always super clear have proven to make this a challenging read.
I read about 40 or so pages before realizing that I wasn't super confident that I knew exactly what was going on, so I went to Sparknotes for a bit of assistance in order to check whether I was on the right track. I wasn't reading any of the specific analysis or anything, just a bit of chapter summary and a brief glance at the character map to make sure I understood what was what and who was who. And after making sure my ducks were in a row, the next 40 or so pages have been so much smoother, and I'm finding myself actually enjoying it a lot!
I'm sure some of this increased enjoyment has to do with me adjusting to Woolf's style, but I know with certainty that some of it is most definitely coming from an increase in clarity provided by Sparknotes. But nonetheless it got me thinking! If I find myself LOVING this book by the end of it, does that make it "good" if that level of enjoyment WOULDN'T have happened without the assistance?
Tl;dr – For me, the answer is yes it does make it good as long as it feels enjoyable by the end. I'm somebody who doesn't mind my books taking some figuring out and puzzling together. If some assistance is required for helping me understand a book, that's perfectly fine! It means I learned something and I personally love that. But I also wouldn't at all frown upon somebody who doesn't want to take those extra steps in their reading, because I also fully agree that reading should be enjoyable, whatever that means to each reader.
by PsyferRL