There are four types of fiction books as far their usefulness for my writing goes.

There are books that I am perfectly comfortable with. They don’t challenge me in any way, hit all the necessary tropes, and pass through my head and into oblivion without catching on anything. A Talent for War by Jack McDevit was the most recent one I read: comfortable science-fiction that has just enough spice to it to keep things exciting. These books are fun but useless: they don’t add anything to my style or stories.

Then there are books that I find boring. They aren’t always bad books, sometimes they are objectively genius: for example, A Song of Ice and Fire. I like two characters (Arya and Tyrion), but the rest can go to hell or take a vacation on Dragon Rock or go dance with the White Walkers. I simply don’t care, so I don’t read their chapters (sacrilege, I know). From the first day of school, everyone knows that boring learning materials are the worst if you want to take away something from the lessons. So those books are useless too.

(Disclaimer: I learned a whole lot by reading the first two books of A Song of Ice and Fire and I enjoyed the hell out of the chapters I read of the next three. They are brilliant. I just don’t resonate with most characters in them.)

Then there are books that are a torture to read. Of genres I don’t normally enjoy, of styles I don’t enjoy, and about things I don’t enjoy thinking about, and yet the books hook me enough to soldier through. Most classical literature falls into this slot for me. I’ve recently finished reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, and it was absolute torture, but the cadence in which she writes stuck in my head, and it’s not going anywhere. There is a lot I learn from such books, and I recommend getting way out of your reading comfort zone once in a while to every reader.

And then there are the best books. Books that I don’t know I need before I open them. Books that open up new genres that I’m enraptured by and tell stories with brilliant imagery. They reveal characters that I’d love to know more about and throw light on old issues in a way that provokes original thought. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste NG from last year was such a book for me. These books grip me by the guts and drag me through in one bloody swoop: I can’t get them out of my head until I finish reading, whatever I might be doing at the moment.