Not every book can be a stone cold classic. Do you seek out only the 5-star reads or is a book just as enjoyable if it is a 3-star read? Not an all-timer, but enjoyable nonetheless. Where's the line for recommending a book to someone else?
By Dietrich
Most of what gets published in any given year is just competent entertainment. A three-star novel can be perfectly fine on a plane or when you’re half-asleep on the couch. Clean plot, likable characters, satisfying ending. Job done.
But if you’re trying to get better as a writer, saturating yourself with that stuff doesn’t sharpen you. It flattens you.
Of course, taste is personal—one reader’s five-star mind-blowing read is another’s two-star shrug. That doesn’t erase the gap between work that stretches language and story and work that merely kills time. A writer’s ear still needs training. My concern is feeding it only the competent and the ear may start mistaking flat dialogue for normal, predictable structure for craft, and emotional shortcuts for depth. Mediocrity is contagious, and it lowers the bar until competence looks like artistry.
Reading only for pleasure makes you a consumer. Reading as a writer is different—you’re building instincts, learning what a sentence can carry, noticing the gap between a scene that happens and one that drags. A three-star book can entertain without teaching you a single thing and that’s okay. There’s a time and place for it. But seeking out the books that actually raise the bar exposes you to the upper range of the form so your own ambitions have somewhere real to aim.
That said, I spend plenty of days and evenings with three-star books and audiobooks. I just don’t file them under “influences.” They go under “passing the time.” There’s no shame in that.
It’s not good versus bad. It’s books that expand what you think is possible versus books that just confirm what you already know. Most of the so-called three-stars are professional, readable, and forgettable all at the same time. They leave no residue that changes how you write.
When it comes to recommending something, I try to be honest about why I’m pushing it. If I can’t say that it’ll raise the bar and give the reader something special, I’m likely to keep the title to myself. Handing people mediocrity is a way of lowering the bar, and we already have plenty of that.
Two I’ve recently read that do raise it:
The Lion by Nelson DeMille (John Corey #5). A lean, high-stakes thriller powered by John Corey’s razor-sharp sarcasm. Lethal tension and genuine craft coexist without apology.
Contrapposto by Dave Eggers. A clear-eyed, big-hearted novel about artistic integrity versus the noise of the art world. Eggers is at his most precise about what it costs—and rewards—to keep making real work.
And the next one on my reading stack which I’m sure won’t disappoint: The Hadacol Boogie (#25 in the Dave Robicheaux series) by James Lee Burke. Robicheaux investigates when a cloaked, disfigured man dumps the body of a young woman in a garbage bag on his property, drawing him, Clete Purcel, and new deputy Valerie Benoit into a dangerous web of bayou corruption, mobsters, and personal ghosts.
Read widely and hang onto the books that shaped you and changed how you hear sentences and build scenes. Go back to them. Steal from them. Let the three-star books exist without giving them authority over your standards.
Enjoy imperfect work. Enjoyment is allowed. Not every book has to be a classic. The writers who improved you were almost never the merely average. They were the ones who made the ordinary look insufficient. The ones that shape you should be closer to classic than to competent — anything less is a poor teacher.
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