Is There a Common Thread Here?

I am pondering a question that has haunted me for some time. What is it that is the common characteristic of the writers I like? I am terribly opinionated about authors. There are some others, generally recognized as fine authors by the canon, whom I really don't enjoy. For example, I found Dreiser's Sister Carrie to be flat and unrealistic, Hemingway not generally worth my time, and James Fenimore Cooper a drudgery to read. Yet there are other authors that I gladly read and re-read and re-read yet again. Chesterton, Tolkien (we've literally worn out a whole set of LOTR and had to buy a new one), C.S. Lewis (ditto for being on a second set of Narnia and the Space trilogy needs replacing), Dorothy Sayers, Charlotte Bronte, Hawthorne, L'Engle (on our second copy of a Ring of Endless Light), Alcott (I re-read Little Women and Little Men endlessly in junior high), Christie,Dickens,Flannery O'Connor,some, but not all, of Stephen Lawhead, Michael O'Brien, Jane Austen, Dante, some of Evelyn Waugh, Sigrid Undset, some, but certainly not all of Twain (sorry Atticus!). Well you can sort of see there isn't any particular thread, probably. They come from different time periods they don't all write explicitly Christian fiction, although most of them would be seen as Christian in one sense or another. Now to throw in a couple of oddities, I acually enjoy some, although not all, of Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, and Helen McInnes, none of whom would be particularly linked with Christianity at all. I also like a bunch of other mystery writers, some of whom are pretty explicitly secular.

So why do I like these folks and yet find so many of the so-called greats to be not worth bothering with? Are they all romantics who pit good against evil? Perhaps. Perhaps there really is no thread. Some people would look at my list and see it as not quite high brow enough. If you looked at my book shelves (the fiction ones at least) you would see that they are far fuller of English than American authors. That's partly because the English authors cover a wider span of time, but it's not the only reason. I have simply found fewer American authors that I truly enjoy. There are some pieces of American literature like Catcher in the Rye that I read once (probably for some class or other) and have never picked up again. There are books like Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice that I read for the first time as a teenager and have re-read more than once as an adult, finding new things to love each time. Of the American writers that write before 1900 only Hawthorne, Alcott, and small amounts of Twain, would fall into the same category. Even in the twentieth century American short fiction captured me far more than most American novels. Yet I continue to discover, devour, and re-read British, Canadian, and other nationalities fiction.

So those of you who are literary and love people like Hemingway and Twain, and either loathe or love Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton, et. al. What do you think? Is there a common thread here? Do I just dislike "guy books," in the same way that I sort of dislike what I see as "guy movies" (which my son by the way tells me aren't just "guy movies" things like, oh say, war movies and a lot of westerns)? It can't be deeply developed and "real" characters or I wouldn't enjoy Chesterton's fiction or Waugh's satirical stuff. It can't be happy endings, because many of the books I'm thinking of don't have happy endings. They certainly aren't all mystery stories.

Do any of you have a similar list? Have you found a common thread. Do you find Sister Carrie to be flat and unconvincing? Are you less than enthralled by Hemingway? Would you avoid inflicting Moby Dick on your teenaged daughter? Would you insist that your kids must read Brave New World, but could skip Catcher in the Rye? Who do you love and loathe and what sort of a must read list would you promote?