Lately Evan’s (age 2) favorite words are “not workin’.” He uses this to mean something is just not right, whether it is electrical, mechanical or neither. If he can’t open a door, it’s not workin’. If he can’t fit something in a container, it’s not workin’. If he can’t reach the light switch, it’s not workin’.

Evan likes books, and he gets a lot of his words from being read to. So I wasn’t really surprised when he asked to see my book, the book I was carrying in my bag. I think I may have mentioned before that I never go anywhere without a book. I said yes, so he dug in the bag and pulled out the 400 page novel I’m reading. He needed both hands to hold it and quickly put it down, opened it, and flipped through a few pages. “This book’s not workin’, Omma.” Translation: “This book has no pictures, Omma.”

I’m still laughing about that, but it got me thinking about what makes a book not work for me as a reader, and what makes it not work for me as a writer. As a reader I like romance in a novel, but it can’t be just romance. It has to be romance plus mystery or romance plus history or even romance plus humor. Just plain romance doesn’t work for me. Humor is good in almost any book, and I hope to get better at adding humor into whatever I write.

One of the worst novels I ever read was  House of Sand and Fog. I chose to read it because it was an Oprah Book Club read, and it won awards. The premise was implausible from the beginning, the characters acted stupidly, and the whole thing was dark and depressing. I kept reading it because I thought there might be some light at the end. There wasn’t. It was definitely not workin’ for me.

I also don’t like blood and guts. Although I love Stephen King, I had to skip over parts of The Stand because it was just too much blood and guts for me.

It’s a little bit harder for me to say what doesn’t work as a writer because I don’t usually start writing anything (novel, essay, poem)without knowing at least the beginning and the ending. I don’t write in genres that I don’t like, for example, fantasy. Although fantasy novels are wildly popular with kids, I’ll never even attempt to write one. I just don’t like fantasy. Sometimes I may try to write a poem in a particular form, like a sonnet, and get stuck half way through. So, I guess in that case I would say that the writing was not workin’ for me.

I’ll think about this some more. How about you? What makes a book not work for you?