An obvious, yet undefinable quality.

I recently picked up the three-book set of Hunger Games at one of our discount shops. OK, well I am behind the times, and have not seen the film, but I had an inkling that these would be interesting.

My reading tends to go in fits and starts, but over the years I have read hundreds of books and enjoyed most of them. Some have been hard to read as for some reason I did not connect with them. In part this is probably a mix of the story telling and technical aspects of the author's writing style. Whatever the reason I think I have plenty of experience of the good and the poor and it seems to have little or no corrrelation to subject matters, length of story, expense of the book or any other parameter I can think of.

The relevance here is that I have just finished the first book of the set and was struck by how easy it was to read; really, really easy. No eye strain, no brain strain, the story flowed and was digested easily. The pace seemed to work, the language, even the new names, vocabulary and imagery worked well.

I suspect we could do all sorts of analysis on why it worked and still not capture the essence. The key is that it did and it added to my enjoyment.

The experience reminds me that that this quality of writing is achievable and something I can aspire to, even if my skill levels fall well short.

It will be interesting to see if this is maintained through the next two books. I feel future posts coming on, either way.