How does entertainment entertain you?

[thefourthvine]

This is going to sound strange coming from someone who reads a bucketload of slash, but I don't actually like romance. In movies, when the couple (m/m, f/f, f/m, other/other, whatever) leans in for the big kiss, backlit by an exploding planet, I tend to be thinking, Oh my god, people, would you get out of the way? There's an EXPLODING PLANET back there! Or in a book, when the couple takes a few minutes out of saving the universe for a roll in the hay, I am generally thinking, Save the universe FIRST. Fuck in your own damn time. And you never, ever want to go see a romantic comedy with me. If you're lucky, I will just leave the theater in the first act and you'll come find me in the hallway when it's over. That's if you're lucky.

So romance novels are not the best fit for me. But Best Beloved reads a lot of them, and if she's interested in something, generally I end up interested in it, too. Some months back, we started a deal where she recommends some of the romance novels she thinks most appropriate for me, and I read them, and then we discuss them. And I find them fascinating, both as a comparison to fan fiction and in their own right; it's amazingly interesting to figure out the rules and tropes and interests and focuses of a genre that is in no way your native territory, and it is just indescribably gripping to figure out what those things say about the writers and readers of romance and the society they come from.

And of course I explain all that to Best Beloved at - well, let's be polite and simply say at great length - and she asks me questions and makes comments and provides necessary context (like the time, early on, that I noted that I felt the relationship in the book had been rushed because the protagonists got together after only six months, and she, after she stopped laughing, noted that often protagonists meet on the first day, have sex on the second, and are married by the end of the week) - and we discuss it all extensively. And then, usually right before one of us looks at the clock and realizes that we once again have lost an entire evening to the analysis of romance novels, given that it's approaching midnight and the earthling will be waking us up at six, Best Beloved says this:

"But are you enjoying the book?"

And I just stare at her in utter confusion. To me, that is a wholly nonsensical question, coming at that point in the conversation. But recently I decided she'd asked it enough that it had to have some meaning that I just was not getting, so I asked her what she meant by "enjoying the book." And she said, "Well, like, do you look forward to reading it?"

I was floored, because that would never occur to me as a possible definition or symptom of enjoying a book. I expressed, at some length, how completely alien that was to me - I mean, I can be dreading reading something and still absolutely enjoying it - and she asked me what I meant by enjoying a book. And I gave what is, to me, the obvious answer: if the book gives you something to think about, both while you're reading it and when you're not reading it, then it is an enjoyable book.

Best Beloved found that equally strange, although she noted that that explained a lot about how I deal with entertainment just generally. (It also, though she didn't actually bring this up, partly explains why I love fan fiction - fan fiction is someone writing out her thoughts about some media that she's consumed. In other words, fan fiction is a way for me to experience other people's enjoyment of some media.)

But the thing is, BB and I have been together for 18 years, and for all that time, we've been watching the same movies and reading a lot of the same books and stories. And yet we have totally different ideas of what enjoying entertainment means. So now I'm wondering what you all mean when you say you're enjoying a book or a movie or a TV show or a manga series or whatever. How does your entertainment entertain you?

Comments

[ratcreature]

I think it's escapism mostly. For the duration of the entertainment I'm not me but someone/somewhere else.

[thefourthvine]

I always thought that when people talked about escapism, they meant what I mean: you are thinking so hard about what you're reading that you aren't thinking about your problems. Is that kind of what you mean? (I now have a deep impulse to go around asking people, "But what do you MEAN when you say 'good'?" Or whatever. HELP. THE SEMANTICS ARE COMING FOR ME.)

[miella]

Huh. That's really interesting. I am way more with Best Beloved on this one. If I say I am enjoying something, it is because it actively calls to me; I look forward to it and it elicits some sort of pleased response in me. I can find something interesting, or intriguing, or want to learn more, or find it fascinating, and none of those necessarily involve enjoyment. Enjoyment involves joy in some fashion, and just giving me something to think about is a totally separate thing. They certainly CAN occur simultaneously, but they don't always.

It's like, there are things I've read or seen or whatnot (for example, Se7en, Trainspotting, One Hundred Years of Solitude) that I am glad I did, for what it told me about the culture or writer or whatever, but I would never say I enjoyed them.

[queue]

This is very much how I feel. Especially given what I do for a living and other factors in my offline life, the value of the word "enjoyment" that I look for in my reading/viewing/listening involves joy and happiness and pleasure far more than it does fascination or intellectual engagement or the planting of long-rooted ideas.

That said - and I should imagine I share this with the commenter on whose comment I'm poaching and probably also with the VAST majority of your flist/circle - if I don't feel at least a modicum of intellectual engagement I can't get to the joy/happiness/pleasure part. In other words, if you ain't got grammar, you ain't got me.

[torachan]

Hmm, I haven't really thought about it before. My answer is maybe a little closer to hers than yours. I certainly wouldn't call anything I dreaded reading enjoyable. The only reasons I can think of to dread reading something are that it's really badly written or totally uninteresting or rage-making or some combination of the three. I am unlikely to enjoy that.

Though I don't necessarily look forward to reading it, either. I may look forward to the idea of reading it, or rather, the idea of having read it and knowing the story/information, but I can still feel meh about actually reading it, because reading takes up time when I could be being productive and I am always behind on stuff and thus reading is sometimes/often something that adds to my stress levels because it means I'm not getting something else done.

But I also wouldn't say that to be enjoyable something has to make me think. I enjoy plenty of stuff that I don't think about at all. They probably won't be my favorite thing ever, but I don't have negative feelings towards them.

Oh, I guess that's it. Enjoyable is something I don't have entirely negative feelings about. There can be some badness in there, but if the bad outweighs the good, I'm more likely to be frustrated than feel like I enjoyed it. If I felt like I wasted my time, I am unlikely to feel I enjoyed it.

It's a pretty low threshold, though. When I'm writing reviews, I will say something was enjoyable even if I don't rec it. It doesn't mean I thought it was great or that I really liked it, just that it was okay and didn't make me angry or wasn't horribly bad writing or something.

I tend to use the word to describe something less than a favorite. If I really liked/loved something, I won't use the word enjoyable, because I will be more enthusiastic about it. Enjoyable is a "eh, it was okay, but I wasn't wowed" kind of thing. Enjoyable is "I didn't feel like I wasted my time, but it's not a favorite".

[polarisnorth]

A lot of what I read is for catharsis/escapism. This is why I tend to avoid books or fics that I know don't end happily; why I tend to avoid pairings (such as Doctor/Master and other mindgame 'ships) that lend themselves to those endings. It's why I still have a great love of YA fiction, and why these days I return to old favorites more often than seeking out new books to read. My approach to fanfiction is more variable, and I don't mind some bittersweetness mixed in, or some angst on my way to the happy ending (given that I'm currently blazing through the backlog of Star Trek XI fic that's been written since the last time I looked at that fandom, it's tolerance I kind of have to have). If I had to give a reason for this, I'd point to the sort of nonfiction book that I read: histories of the World Wars, Jewish history, LGBT history. And I enjoy that; it makes me think. It even makes me want to write (hello, historical novels that I dream of writing). But after having my heart broken by things that have actually happened, I don't go looking for it in my fiction.

My approach to what I watch is a little different; I have a huge jones for police procedurals and Criminal Minds is pretty much my favorite thing ever right now. And those can have downer endings (with CM, pretty damn often). But at the end of the day, I watch them because they're about trying to do the right thing (and because there are pretty people with guns; I never said I was entirely altruistic). I have a vast and unironic love for action movies, as aware as I am of their foibles. (Shit blowing up! Die Hard ruined me for everything.) But there are plenty of movies, very good movies, classic movies, which I will never see because if I know something is going to hurt me to watch... well, that's just not really my thing. Maybe that makes me shallow as far as my taste is concerned, and sometimes I do watch things I know will hurt (if I do, it's likely to be historical, like The Pianist or Casablanca). But on the whole, that's not what I'm in it for, and that's fine with me.

[turlough]

I feel like I could have written your first paragraph myself - except for being in different fandoms and having different nonfiction tastes. It's exactly how I feel about fiction and fanfiction and nonfiction!

[vass]

if the book gives you something to think about, both while you're reading it and when you're not reading it, then it is an enjoyable book.

This is my definition.

[florahart]

This is not quite an answer to your question and is super-long-winded, but recently, like a year or so ago, it occurred to me during a conversation with my mother (whom I have known for, you know, FORTY YEARS) that she and I do not think of stories (reading them, but also more generally) as the same thing. First, a digression: I remember very vividly the moment in which I understood what reading was. I was not being taught to read; I was being read to, but because I had a monster attention span, despite that I was not quite three, I was being read Heidi, the book about the little girl with the grandfather and the goats and the three Swiss cantons. I remember observing that my dad's finger under the words--that the shapes on the page matched the sounds and were predictable, and in a few seconds all at once (not that I could have explained this any time in the next many years) I realized that this was a code, that it was learnable, that I could learn it, that learning it would mean reading independently and that reading independently would mean I could get any story, any story at all, at any time. That writing a story down allowed anyone to hear it later without the author being present, and reading a story meant not needing the teller present, and that the story would be this constant.

(not coincidentally, I literally got down my old picture books I knew by heart and learned the essentials of reading that night and the next day. I was very OMG CAN HAS about this. My mother was somewhat shocked by this sudden development.)

Over time, this perception of what stories were evolved; after all, I learned that I bring something to the story--that what I hear the author saying sometimes isn't the same, despite the constant text, if I have particular experiences behind me, for instance--and that there are devices like unreliable narrators (sometimes on purpose, sometimes because the author lacked information) and irony and metaphors. But for me, I can barely remember a time that I didn't have this perception of the story as this thing that one person makes and another person perceives, perhaps at another time, and that it's a way of passing along both the joy of the story (the plot) and a whole slew of information (the details). I always loved to read, and I always knew quite firmly that the purpose of this was to get more stories, more perspectives, more information, more things to find that I could identify with or could not identify with and how amazing was THAT, that someone unlike me could tell this story, and I could read it many years later and very far away, and it could make me think how interesting/surprising/frightening/whatever, that some people write with paintbrushes in picture-words, and some people make their own clothing out of hides and some people live in houses made of clay. And it could make me think a whole string of what-if--what if I were a child in an orphanage run by a cruel overseer? What if I were alone on an island? What if I were on a spaceship to Mars? What if I I had a twin, and I and my twin and our also-twin siblings were running around Portugal solving a mystery about marionettes?

So reading and stories had this dual purpose of joy and education, and even when the education was kind of skewed or weird (when I was seven I wasn't thinking all that hard about representations of race or whether female characters had any depth, and certainly many things I learned were not "true" so much as "useful to the story being told"), still, I think what I learned in general, insofar as finding ways to identify with the POV character or ways to think about in what context I would make this character's choices, that was all good. I'm not sure whether that was my experience because I tend to want to understand people's motivations (in what context would I make the choices this character is making? What do I know that makes her choices look like a bad idea to me?), or whether this tendency comes of how I understood reading, though.

And I mean, there are some things I read, and a typical romance novel is certainly one type of this, where the story isn't new, the information isn't new, and there's nothing at all to be learned, and yes, then what I'm doing is engaging in just sort of rolling around in a new copy of something comfortable and familiar and easy, but that's like this one subset, and it's like ice cream: delicious, satisfying, not a particularly good diet, and tiresome and no longer satisfying if it's all you eat.

ANYWAY. So when I realized that to my mom, stories that do not present for her a point-of-view character she both can and wants to identify with (probably but not always female and of a social standing she has some experience with, probably possessed of an ethical system mirroring hers, probably fairly social and driven; or perhaps most of those things with a difference that she perceives as minor) are not interesting? I was blown away. This isn't me slamming her way of interacting with text, but just, generally, there is no sense of what-if in what she wants to read. There are stories she can identify with (which she likes) and stories which just make no sense because they aren't realistic (to her). And then there's reading for deliberate learning, which isn't fiction. That's like, textbook reading. Facts. And since for me the big amazing value of fiction is the what-if? I was like, wait, what? But, but!

But to her, the point of fiction is mostly, I dunno, catharsis, often, or reading a story that totally could happen to her and feeling the obvious empathy; and if it totally couldn't happen to her, she doesn't see the point--the story is impractical and impossible, and therefore it doesn't make sense.

/ramble of doom.

[misspamela]

I used to teach, and my students often had very similar attitudes to your mother, to the point where they generally didn't like fiction at all. They considered it "making stuff up" and therefore, untrustworthy. The story lost any meaning for them the second it wasn't real, because they lacked the ability to make it "real" in their own heads.

[winter_elf]

I'm with BB. :)

Though I'll read much more angst/dark/depressing in fanfic (it's short!) than I will tolerate with a published romance/sci-fi/fantasy. And if I read a fanfic that I really can't get out of my mind, I'll pull out an old favorite that I know where it's going and will lift my spirits.

[l_elfie]

a lot of my enjoyment is linked to thematic meaning of a thing, actually. (not all of it--i enjoy many things with inherently stupid messages, haha.) like, i think no country for old men is in many respects a brilliant film, but i don't like it and can't recommend it because of what i got out of it thematically. yes, it gave me something to think about, but it also made me feel sick to my stomach and upset for several days afterward. maybe that was the intention of the filmmakers.

on the other hand, something like dancer in the dark made me want to die after watching it, but i enjoyed the experience because of all the things it was saying thematically about the awful things that happened, and the way it said them.

i'm not positive that this explanation makes sense, but i find asking myself that question to be v. interesting, so thanks!

(my examples are always movies, because that's how i roll; i realize that's not how you roll: sorry! :/)

[tielan]

There are books I enjoy once - books that I enjoy while I'm reading it but don't think about much.

Then there are books that I enjoy many times - books that I re-read over and over for...whatever it is that hits my id in there. Space battles or political manoeuvring, a relationship or a dynamic between characters, or just the way the world's been written (in fantasy novel) and the style of writing.

Some shows I enjoy once or twice per episode - the Stargates, for instance. But I can watch NCIS, Leverage, or BSG over and over. In this case, I can watch it without a 'wince factor' - where some concept or line or behaviour is winceworthy.

Do I look forward to reading/watching it? I...don't know. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes...no.

I think it doesn't help that the things I look for in media doesn't tend to be mainstream, or tends to be a minor angle in mainstream media.

[flourish]

I like both kinds, but usually when I am just grabbing a book, I want something that will give me your Best Beloved's kind of pleasure. (I also read romance novels.) The best books hit both: that is, I really look forward to reading them and enjoy them and find them gripping, but they also give me something to think about (and sometimes I disagree with them).

Amusingly, I have this argument with my S.O. Generally I don't like to read books without a significant and sympathetic female character, not because I think that other books are bad, but because I can't get into the skin of the main character and really enjoy the book. (Don DeLillo, White Noise, I'm looking at you: you could have been so enjoyable for me if you weren't written from the least interesting-to-me perspective ever!) I can force myself to read books that I know will give me a lot to think about that don't fit this for me, but it's a struggle.

[concinnity]

*waves* I'm trying to read White Noise right now and having the exact.same.response. ugh.
/threadjack

[laughingrat]

That's pretty interesting. I do want my entertainment to give me something to chew on, generally. Either that or to be so completely nonsensical that it has little to do with actual reality (think Aqua Teen Hunger Force). But either way, I usually want it to either expand my mind beyond my own experiences, or help me understand my own experiences more.

[james]

There is enjoying a book while I'm reading it, and there is "glad I read it" afterwards.

Enjoying a book at its best is when it sucks me in so much that every part of my brain shuts off and I'm just absorbing everything (and nothing more) than the book is giving me. Lois McMaster Bujold's books do this for me generally, and Sandman Slim was probably the most recent book to do this for me. Often books will almost suck me in but I will still be able to analyse what I'm reading or set the book down without needing to pick it right back up. (Many books I can start, get halfway into and be at one of the big crises points, and set down for six months before picking it back up again.)

So if a book can make me simply consume it, it is completely successful at entertaining me. But I can enjoy a book which almost does this, or manages it for a few chapters, or simply leaves me, at the end, thinking I'd like to see what happens next in that reality.

Although there is a series where, as I'm reading it, I find I could really care less if I finish it or not but by the end I'm always glad I read it and want to read the next. But reading so much book for that payoff at only the end is, I've decided, not worth it.

Being glad I read a book comes when, afterwards, I find myself wanting to read the next one, or wanting to reread the book someday, or simply feeling happy because the book carried me along to a happy, contented place (the characters have a happy ending and I can feel it right along with them.) Books which give me something to think about fit into this category, and books which make me want to write fanfiction fit into this category. Dark Wing by Walter Hunt is a book which made me so incredibly happy I'd read it, for its use of philosophy and psychology in a human-versus-alien space fleet war story that I still get happy squeals out of it. And yet I was bored the sequel and stopped reading the series. But Dark Wing made the aliens just as real and complex and sympathetic (and we saw parts of the war from their POV and, at points, you're screaming at the stupid humans - but then you switch POVs back and you're all 'oh, yes, OK I get it now')

On the other (third?) hand, when I enjoy a movie or tv show it means something completely different. Enjoying a tv show most often means that I am engaged in the characters and universe for my own creative purposes. Whether this is writing or reading fanfiction, the shows I love best are the ones for which I am most active in creative fanworks. Shows which do all the work for me I can enjoy for about two episodes then I'm bored. (Sitcoms are like this. I love Big Bang Theory but can only watch tiny bits of it then I'm done laughing and ready to move on with my life.)

Movies can either be enjoyable for book reasons or tv show reasons, depending on how much of my brain the movie manages to shut off. If I'm analyzing the movie and taking it apart and noticing the plot holes or how the dialogue is stilted or doesn't fit the character -- well then there had better be explosions and shirtless people fighting in slow-mo to make up for it. (I have been forbidden to see Avatar, for instance, because my family knows I would hate it for being a badly written movie and wouldn't be able to overlook that for the 3D wonders.)

One interesting aspect, I find, of being entertained by tv shows which give me something eternal to do is that after a couple of seasons I very often stop watching the show and don't miss it, but still enjoy the fandom. Generally this is because I like the characters and universe and can easily make up the storylines I want to see, and often the show's powers that be will start doing things by third or fourth season that I don't like, or actually hate. Naturally I am eventually left behind by fans still in canon, but I haven't seen any Supernatural since halfway into S3 and I still enjoy reading Dean/Castiel stories and can follow along. (And S6 looks like it might actually suck me back in, now that the God versus Devil stuff is mostly kind of over-ish. And I don't mind missing three years of canon).

As a final note, I absolutely adore watching football. (American-style). I don't write sports slash for it, I just sit and watch (and knit). Football disengages my thinking-brain very nicely and I am able to simply watch and enjoy without having to do any of the work. (I have to knit because otherwise I can't sit still for more than a quarter, even though I'm enjoying it - my analytical brain needs to do *something.*) Football entertains me immensely, but I don't collect stats or follow storylines outside of the game (other than the big ones you can't get away from) and it is just a completely different type of beast than any other form of media that entertains me. (Although 'explosions and shirtless bodies fighting' movies are probably closer to football than the others.)

Conversely, my wife consumes a ton of books and tv shows (10x more than I do) and she doesn't analyze it or write fanfiction (she does read it, but more because eventually there isn't anything on tv and you can't afford more books and the library doesn't have anything available and it's across town. Fanfiction is 'more free books' more than 'I need to know more about this character/universe'). And she is entertained by things which drive me nuts because they're badly written or they don't engage me (sitcoms, reality shows - dear God the reality shows). We tend to have one or two shows that we both like - right now it's Leverage and Top Gear. Oh, and 'How The Earth Was Made' which is a really awesome geological study of the planet.

In conclusion, as you may have noticed, I like thinking about and understanding my entertainment, analyzing and discussing it, and enjoy it when it works even when it's taken apart. My wife likes to be distracted from life for awhile and then moves on to the next book or show. (She never rereads books, I reread all the time and own many fewer books as a result.)

Thank God for Netflix streaming, is all I can say.

[soc_puppet]

Well, for starters, there's escapism. If I can get lost in it, practically swimming in the story, that's part of my enjoyment. If something about the story breaks the verisimilitude, that detracts from my enjoyment; the more it's broken, the more likely I am to set the book aside (I have yet to throw one, though I've been tempted), change the channel, or just find something else to do.

Next is whether I like what the story makes me feel. I don't like a lot of anger or angst or guilt, all that lot, so while I can enjoy a story that involves a lot of that, for the most part I'll be slogging through in the hopes that it gets "better" the farther I go along. Any re-reads will likely be just the "good" parts, especially since I usually take the emotions with me from what I've been reading/watching/wev into the next activity. Guilt and self-pity are probably the worst offenders for me; as a lapsed/lapsing Catholic, guilt just puts me in a place I don't want to be in, and self-pity usually leaves me frustrated at all the other things the character could be doing (I like a certain amount of emotional pragmatism, apparently). Mourning is okay, because that is a way of dealing with/doing things, but if it prevents the story from moving on, I'll probably get bored sooner than later.

Wanting to share in others' enjoyment or extend my own is probably the next step up. This is when I seek out fanfics and fanart, and start clicking reviews whenever I come across them. It's also when I end up thinking a lot about the story outside of reading/watching it. The ultimate level of this is if a story energizes me, particularly creatively. If I leave it wanting to do something artistic, whether it's for that particular story or not, that means I really enjoyed it.

The last part is when a story changes the way I think about something. I mean, it's great if I can just generally learn from what I read or watch, but if a story fundamentally changes the way I perceive something? And if it does so while presenting me with a world and/or characters I find emotionally engaging? I consider my world pretty well rocked.

Basically, the last two factors are enhancement of the first two; if a story meets the first two requirements, I'll be able to say I liked it, or at least that I didn't dislike it, but the other two parts lend a degree of enjoyment that I'll want to repeat, and probably share with others. Similarly, a story can motivate me creatively or teach me something/change the way I think about something without meeting the first two criteria, but that doesn't necessarily mean I enjoyed it. In fact, as far as creative motivation goes, it can be quite the opposite.

So I guess you could say that whether I enjoy a story or not depends on whether I get something out of it, and the more I get out of it, the more I enjoy it.

[jamjar]

It's something that I like having in my head.

[ldthomps]

Hmmm. I used to read romances Voraciously, consuming everything in our library system and then moving on to the next. And while I had to read for school as well, and really loved some of the literature, romances were the only books I Really Enjoyed. But that enjoyment was entirely escapism, the predictability of knowing it'd end well, projecting myself into the story of connecting with another. I'd stopped reading romances almost entirely before I partnered up, because they felt like a waste of time redundant drug instead of fun. But that was part of a whole changing mental state.

I can still really enjoy YA sci fi or what have you, but am Most entertained by non-fiction, so I'm thinking I'm with BB. Except Faulkner, I enjoy Faulkner despite his... challenging topics, but that's more about the sound of the prose than the plot.

In other media, I find mind-candy TV mostly tedious, but almost all movies entertaining, whether they be predictable, awful, or challenging art-house. But I guess I feel less entertained by the truly challenging movies, and more edified, I guess? It sounds sort of like you find edification entertaining - which is Awesome!

[musesfool]

I look for my entertainment to move me somehow - make me think, make me laugh, make me cry, make me desperate to find out what happened next, make me care about the characters involved.

As other people have said, there are different levels of entertainment/enjoyment: there's the comfortable old familiar rereads/rewatches, where I know what happens but I still get the same happy feelings from it (and sometimes I see something new in it, depending on how long it's been since I last visited); there's the thrill of the new, where I get immersed in a new world with new people and want to know everything about them. There's the fannish enjoyment, where that wanting to know everything about them spills over into thinking about them all the time, to the point where I need to tell stories to find out what happened/how they did [X]/what if [Y] etc. I think in some ways, fanfic combines both impulses - the comfort of familiar, well-loved characters in new situations (or, if it's ship fic, in familiar situations they won't necessarily run into in the source, so you get Remus and Sirius in the rom com or whatever).

And then there's non-fictional entertainment, like watching sports or going to a concert (or just listening to music), that also moves me and/or makes me think, but doesn't really involve all the "what if" scenarios (except for stuff like, "What if Wright hadn't hit into a double play and instead had driven in the winning run?" but that doesn't kick over into wanting to write that story, it just becomes frustrating because he should be better than that! They should be winning more! They're professionals, ffs! Which isn't to say that some sports fans don't have that kind of response - see fantasy leagues etc., even before you get to the fanfic.

I hope that made sense.

[jadelennox]

I'm different with television and books. I love it when television gives me something to think about, but I've gotten to the point where if it also makes me angry, that strips away all of my enjoyment. Which means I watch a lot less television than I used to.

For books, on the other hand, I love them if they don't make me think at all to make me enjoy myself, I love them if they make me furious and angry, I love them if they give me something to think about, I love them if they don't. Pretty much the only thing I don't forgive books for is boring me (which is why I don't read much non-genre adult fiction).

[sage]

I've never been much of a romance novel fan, although fandom has taught me to enjoy some queer romances. Mainly, I just don't CARE whether two characters hook up when there's a war on, or an apocalypse happening, or a murder to solve, or whatever the action plot is. Romance plots need to work extra hard to keep my attention -- and again, fanfic has the added bonus of already having my affection for the characters, so I'm inwardly smishing the characters together from the outset. Profic has to win my interest in them from scratch.

And even then, I'm so with you on the "fuck on your own time, save the world now!" issue.

I read a lot, and in a ton of different genres, but it's rare that I read something I actively dislike. Still, when it happens, I'm such a completist about finishing what I start that I generally can't put the book down. THEN my enjoyment becomes about picking it apart to see what's wrong with the book and why it fails to work for me. And then I post a scathing review on my Goodreads and all is well with the world. But that only works as long as the book has a fundamental core that succeeds, but with major flaws that get in my way. Things that I just can't get into no matter how I try, or books that are 100% agonizingly wrong-headed go on my "abandoned" list.

The thing is, reading a book is for me like going on a journey. I don't watch a novel like a movie -- I LIVE the novel in my head as I read. So the question of enjoyment comes down to what sort of fun I'm having as I take that journey. I can enjoy the trip in itself (Tolkien-esque epic adventures), I can enjoy watching other people hook up and fall in love (queer romances), and I can enjoy analyzing why it isn't a great trip but is still interesting (usually books with major sexist/racist/ableist fail), etc.

What's presently breaking my brain is that I'm reading The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and having to adapt my brain to Holmes fic by 30 different authors (without a recs set, gah -- I forget how much I rely on recs until I face an anthology blind like this). My analytical brain wants to take apart how they're all different, while pleasure brain only wants a good story to get lost in. It's like a tug o' war in my head. :P

[brownbetty]

Here is your recset: http://lcsbanana.dreamwidth.org/14194.html

[brownbetty]

The very most enjoyable books are the ones that make me kick my feet in delight, sometimes metaphorically.

But I know what you mean about enjoying and dreading; I'm trying to work my way through Dorothy Dunnet, since I promised, and the woman is amazing. Practically every sentence is a masterwork of craftsmanship, but I tell you what, it's slow going when you're stopping to boggle at every other sentence.

[watersword]

It's — immersive, is the best word I can come up with. If I can believe in a story while I'm consuming it and when I'm not consuming it (I don't believe in the literal truth of fiction, obviously, but if I can believe in a story as a self-contained universe even while I'm not in the midst of it), if I can not get distracted by THAT'S NOT HOW COEUR DE LION DIED and STOP MAKING UP PHYSICS and the like, if I can look up from it and realize holy shit, that was three hours I spent with that novel or watching that movie, if I can literally not hear what's physically going on around me while consuming it. That is enjoyment for me.

[athenejen]

This is a tough question because of all the different flavors of enjoyment, but I think for me it comes down to whether or not the media has invoked in me a satisfying sort of emotion. Sometimes I'll find things edifying and be glad I watched them even though I didn't enjoy them (Jesus Camp comes to mind), but it is possible for me to enjoy things with equally dark (or even darker) topics because of how well the emotions are evoked (Mysterious Skin is a good example of this -- it feels weird to say I enjoyed it because it deals with such dark topics (and left me completely wiped out afterwards), but they're portrayed in such a complex, empathic, smart, interesting, artistically effective and intense way, I was utterly absorbed and interested and involved, and the arc was satisfying). So it's not so much that something needs to make me feel happy, but it needs to have made me feel something, and that something needs to have been/be satisfying.

Making me think often counts in that "made me feel something satisfying" category, but it's not the only thing there. Reading florahart's description of what-if above really resonated with me (a good chunk of the reason I was studying to become a historian was the love of what-ifs). I would add that for me, it's not just the intellectual gathering of further perspectives that I'm after, but also the underlying instinctive/intuitive/empathic understanding of those perspectives and situations and so on. I'm trying to feel them as well as think about them, though of course the thinking about them is often a key part of that.

[norah]

Enjoyment and entertainment are different to me - entertainment is a subset of enjoyment that more closely fits BB's definition and the kind of escapism other commenters are mentioning. Enjoyment is more like what you are talking about - although I would call that "engagement" and make it another subset of "enjoyment" which also includes non-cerebral activities like exercise and socializing and cooking.

[norah]

Also, have you read Janice Radway's Reading The Romance? And you know I wrote my undergrad thesis on romance novels, right?

[risha]

I fall on BB's end of the scale.

There are entertainments I enjoy as backgrounds to my life - sports, reality tv, home improvement shows, etc. I'm generally reading or doing something else at the same time. But in terms of fiction, true enjoyment for me comes from total immersement, and thinking (analyzing) removes me from that to a greater or lesser degree. I don't necessarily dislike something that makes me think, but if at all possible I want to be able to delay that until after I'm done with consuming it. It's also the reason that I tend to avoid anything without a happy ending - I don't like deliberately making myself miserable. And depending on the degree of immersion, that misery may follow me for hours or days.

I sometimes wonder if differences like this are connected to how you think. I'm most likely to achieve total immersement with a book rather then tv or a movie, and if it's done properly I have no awareness of myself or the page or words, only the... well, I was going to say pictures in my mind, but I don't think in pictures or words, just semi-solid abstract constructs. The shape of the story as it's floating in my mind, taking the place of the concept bubble of myself that's normally floating in there.

[turlough]

I'm most likely to achieve total immersement with a book rather then tv or a movie, and if it's done properly I have no awareness of myself or the page or words, only the... well, I was going to say pictures in my mind, but I don't think in pictures or words, just semi-solid abstract constructs. The shape of the story as it's floating in my mind, taking the place of the concept bubble of myself that's normally floating in there.

This really rings a bell with me. I've been trying to explain how I experience a story I read but I've never managed to verbalise the essence of it. This comes very close to doing so. Thank you!

[gorgeousnerd]

I use both forms. To me, thought and discussion always trump that basic feeling of "Do I like this?", which is why I end up talking and thinking quite a bit about media like Glee and Twilight when I think the quality of the source material is poor. But I also like a feeling of excitement and gratification, particularly when other parts of my life are overwhelming (the "escapism" element). Ideally, whatever entertainment I'm participating in will both provoke thought and thrill me, but it doesn't need to.

[firecat]

I love your definition of "enjoyable book." I experience both kinds, and like it best when I experience both about the same work.

I would add that almost everything makes me think, and in order for the thinking to be enjoyable, the work also has to not piss me off too much.