Talkable Tales
F or some time now, the de facto standards for measuring a novel’s quality has been in terms of whether it is a page turner or the reader couldn’t put it down. The formula for creating such a book is simple. Never satisfy the reader’s curiosity until the final page. But I don’t want to talk about that. Instead, I want to walk about how non-page-turner, poorly written books can make it to the top of the bestseller lists. Several months ago, I visited a forum and someone asked the question, “Has anyone read The Shack ? What did you think of it?” I hadn’t heard of it at the time, so I did a little looking around and discovered that it was self-published and yet it had the appearance of a book that was going to do well. At the time, it hadn’t hit the top of any charts yet, but it was on its way up. I bought a copy, just so I would be knowledgeable enough to discuss it. I don’t mean to discuss the ills of The Shack here, other than to say that it is no great surprise that the major Christ...