Sunday, May 29, 2011

Expectations in Reading

I love to read. I learned how to read at a very young age. (Okay, two years old....) Since then my nose has been stuck in a book. And I prefer a physical book in my hands so that I can enjoy the multisensory experience of reading. However, I do love my free ebooks that I can download to the Kindle on my Droid. I am able to whip out my phone, which is always in my pocket, and sneak in a few pages while waiting in line at Target or sitting in a hospital waiting room.

I like to read just about anything. I enjoy light, breezy, cheesy reads as well as the heavier darker stuff. Each type of story can fulfill a different need and a different mood. I just have a few expectations from all of these books.

**Use good spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Am I perfect with these skills? No. And I am okay with a few errors on occasion. But if your story is full of them, I will be too distracted.

**Have a well-developed plot and characters. Shallow stories and characters are no fun to read.

**Engage me. Tell me a good story straight from the heart. Don't give me a bunch of filler or try too hard to be edgy. It will show and I will quit reading. I want to be transported into the characters' world and leave mine behind for a while.

See? I don't ask for much! I don't need a constant Vonnegut!

I will continue to share what I think of certain stories and how they meet my expectations.

GBE 2 Challenge

I don't know how frequently it will fit in, but there is a weekly blogging challenge that I joined. On Sundays, a topic is posted in the Group Blogging Experience group on Facebook. We are supposed to blog on that topic, if we can find a way to make it fit in. I realized that I was able to fit the first topic in all of my blogs, and yes, I am behind by a day. But that is okay. I am still going to do it, anyway. :-)