What Is A Good Read?
April 2021 Ink2Quill Editorial
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What is a good read? Well, It´s anything that tickles your fancy. Right? I think the more relevant question would be to ask, Where are the good stories found? Where can you find them? Where will you never find them?

Nobody honestly knows the answer to those questions and if they answer to look among the classics, well, that´s cheating because everybody knows that and does that. A more honest answer would be to tell you where I found some great content and that that place was not at all where I suspected it would be.

So, for starters, everybody knows that the nest, so to speak, of all good content is the classics. Yes, the classics in any culture are a gold mine for great stories and content ideas for people looking for story inspiration. You haven´t read a good story until you´ve read the likes of V. Hugo, Mary Shelley, W. Shakespeare, A. Camus, J. Verne, etc. Whether it´s ancient Greece, African, Indian or Chinese classics. It makes no difference. I don´t know how they did it but they did and we´re all grateful.

But, but… but. The classics are not the only place to find good stories. Many great stories are recent, or recent enough. Many great stories can be found in the unobvious places. Places and people you would never suspect create great stories. I have been pleasantly surprised and disappointed by assumptions about where great stories are found over and over again. Take for example the Star Wars books. I never thought I would have enjoyed the book “Darth Plagueis” so much written by James Luceno. It was not just the fact that it satisfied so much of my curiosity about the Star Wars universe and things surrounding Darth Vader and The Emperor, Darth Sidious. It was ultimately the story about the Sith Lord, Darth Plagueis who is an interesting character onto himself with Senator Shev Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker as side stories. I knew someone who read all the books and told me what good reads they were but I did not listen until recently. Even though he was an avid reader with a job that allowed him to read while working, I did not listen. I assumed the books and stories were for young adults and I assumed wrong. The universe of Star Wars is a pretty well crafted and complete one. It isn´t a fairy tale but is really for all ages because the characters stories have depth. I´ve always been interested in stories where a talented character turns evil. The question of, why?, always crosses my mind. To answer the enigma that is Darth Vader you really have to read some of the books or watch good videos about the topic from good content creators. (Keep in mind many content creators are not any good so you have to do a little looking).

Another good book that surprised me was from the Aliens franchise. I read the book “Alien Covenant Origins” written by Dean Foster. In the case of “Alien Covenant Origins”, not only was it my first book of the series but the movies give you a pretty good idea about what´s going on in that universe. Add to the fact that I´m not so attracted to the Horror genre and well, reading a book from the series was not on the top of my reading list. I found that for me “Alien Covenant Origins” added details to the story that made the movies a better watch. Like spices to a dish. I also assumed that the Alien books were young adult and they aren´t. I have to say that it´s an original story that deserves to be on screen.

John Ink2Quill

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