Today’s TTT is a love freebie. But first, teases!

“The Camptown ladies sing this song, doo dah, doo dah. Camptown racetrack’s five miles long, oh, doo dah day.”
“Shut up, Kurtis. Do you hear me inflicting my perverted folk fetish on you?”
“Perverted Folk Fetish would be a good name for a band,” said Theo’s voice.

The Eighth Continent

She kept the peacock only out of a superstitious fear of annoying the Judge in his grave. He had liked to see them walking around the place for he said they made him feel rich.

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, Flannery O’Connor

And now, ’love’. Let’s go with ‘elements in books that tend to make me love it’.

(1) Small town settings.  I’m a sucker for them regardless of medium. I love Vicar of Dibley and Little Mosque on the Prairie for the same reason I go for Wendell Berry’s Port William and John Grisham’s Clanton, Mississippi stories. (And, presumably, the same reason Stardew Valley has been the only ‘new’ PC game I’ve gotten into in recent years.) It’s not just the setting itself, but the repeated use of it that really makes it an element to love: when I “know” characters from multiple novels — when I begin seeing them in 3D, with different stories showing different aspects of their personalities – the story really comes alive for me. (I’m currently trying to compose a collection of short stories set in a fictional southern town exploring different aspects of hyperlocal living — petty church politics, the tension between wanting to chase success or meaning, etc.)

(2) The redemption trope. I prefer stories to end in grace regardless, but I especially love when someone who has gone down a dark road — selfishness, depression, hatred, vice, whatever – finds their way back to the light again, growing in humility and resolving to fight harder against their own weaknesses.

(3) ”Love” in relationships that is not confused with romance/sex/etc. One element of modern ‘storytelling’ that I hate-hate-hate-double-hate-loathe entirely is the reduction of so many relationships to romance-pairings. I can forgive this if the story is good otherwise: With Love from London was telegraphing one obvious pairing well before it ended, but the daughter’s discovering of her mother’s side of the story in the main plot made it tolerable. (Stories about relationships that are frayed or broken and then becoming whole again are always attractive.) A story is more interesting to me when strong bonds exist outside that predictable pairing: mentor bonds, for instance, or a case of unrequited love that matures beyond adolescent pining into genuine agape for the other person, wanting what’s best for them regardless. This is one of the reasons Jayber Crow is one of my favorite novels.

(4) A strong sense of Place. This is partially related to the small town trope, but I like when characters are not just nondescripts on a flat stage, but people whose lives are strongly influenced by Place — a building in their town, the town itself. 

(5) Eccentrics. I like characters who are weird. Not characters who are weird for weirdness’ sake, for whom Being Weird!!! is their whole identity, but characters whose self-confidence or focus is such that they don’t care about being regarded poorly by society at large. These can be artists, intellectuals, or ordinary cranks.

(6) Art in story. This one is a little more difficult to articulate, but I really like it when some piece of music or art intersects with the story and even drives it a bit, so it’s inspiring characters or themes in the story, and the reader’s enjoyment of it is magnified if it inspires them to look at the art or listen to the music themselves. 

(7) Man vs…whatever. I like stories about a singular hero raging against the State, against a corporate dictatorship, fighting for survival in a disaster, etc. 

(8) Unusual travel. I like reading stories (fiction or non) about people going across the country on trains, horses, bicycles, etc.

(9) Extremely immersive historical fiction. (Looking at you, Bernard Cornwell.)

(10) Great dialogue. (Again, looking at Cornwell..)