How to say this nicely, why would Danielle Steele’s books still make the N.Y. times bestseller list again and again? Because people either started reading her back in the day and they have failed to move on. Believe me, I know a lot of people like that. They love them some D.S. and that is it.
Perhaps her books are prominently displayed everywhere and always available. Someone’s reading them.

What works for me definitely doesn’t work for everyone else, or all the authors I love would be on the best seller list. I like to believe it is because a lot of people tend to stick to what they know and love, historical, fantasy, paranormal, what have you. I tend to skip from genre to genre. I have auto-buy authors but I also have auto do not buy authors. Now there’s a topic. Do I dare list them? Nah.

Does this mean I don’t enjoy them? No, not at all. I’m not sure I’m even looking for fabulousness. I am looking for something that truly engages me for that moment in time, that gives me what I need to escape at that moment–maybe that’s the wow factor for me.

But what defines the wow factor? It’s obvious from the comments that it’s entirely subjective, each person having different, often quite diverse, answers. I’d add that the other factor affecting it is where you are in your life while you’re reading a story. (In fact, if anyone wants to hear about my B.A. paper *cough* years ago….I digress.) Books, ideas, etc., affect us differently at different stages of our lives. A book I read and loved as a child may still wow me as an adult but it will probably be on an entirely different level.

As an example, when the Joy Luck Club came out, my best friend and I both read it. We generally liked the same books, we had the same background, same values, were the same ages and were at similar stages in our lives–with one difference. She had a just had a baby. There’s a particular scene in the book that was especially devastating to her because of the circumstances. I was affected by the scene but not to the extent she was. We were both wowed by the book but for entirely different reasons. She’ll never forget that one scene while I will recall the relationship between a particular mother/daughter pair. Simply because of who we are and who we were when we read it.

I guess my answer is that there is no universal wow factor. It’s my wow factor and your wow factor and her wow factor and his wow factor.

This is off topic, but… It’s always interesting for me to see people list out favorite authors. Despite all the reading I do, all the lurking on websites and reading RT, etc., there are always a bunch of authors named who I’ve never heard of before. That never ceases to amaze me.

To get sucked in and held by a book from beginning to end is not as easy for me as it used to be. It has to be bone-shakingly special to keep my attention, otherwise I’ll abandon reading and turn to my real addiction, TV. Watch “Carnivale” for the hundredth time and get swept away into another world the easy way–visually, with music, props and costumes.

For me a lot of it is summed up in that phrase “a page-turner”. Some books are absolutely fine but I just keep getting STUCK. The pages won’t turn. I’m going back and re-reading paragraphs and they’re just not registering. And I have no curiosity about what’s coming next. Or worse, I am curious, but it’s enough to just skim through to the end.