Ulysses is more admirable than likeable, I think, though I know there are plenty of people who will disagree with me. But then you don't have to like something to know that it's good - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth - never really been able to get on with any of them, but I can see there are great qualities there. Just not to my taste.
At the same time you don't have to hate something to know that it's bad. Anything written to fit within a specific genre, in other words with a ring-fenced readership in mind, has questions to answer in my view. Who in their right mind, who's in it for the love of it and not for the money, would sit down and think I'm going to write a fantasy novel? Or I'm going to write an historical romance? What's wrong with just I'm going to write a book? Of course I don't have the insight into these writers' minds to know what they're thinking, but the results usually speak for themselves.
For what it's worth, I disagree with Corso that a book needs a good plot or a synopsis on the back to be worth reading. I'm more interested in the words and the language on a sentence-by-sentence level - though that's not to say the bigger picture doesn't get a look in. The plot, setting, characters and story are really secondary. To anyone who says (I'm extending here, I know Corso didn't say this) that you need to have likeable or sympathetic characters for a good book, I give you A Handful of Dust, or Something Happened, or Money.
For me, if you just want thrills and entertainment, then film or TV does that better than books. What's best about books is what they can do that other media can't: which always comes down to the quality of writing. If you haven't got that you haven't got anything. But nobody ever did tell Dan Brown.
As for critical acclaim, well along with word of mouth, I think this is the best way to discover something you might not otherwise have read. Also literary prizes: without the Orange and the Whitbread I would never have picked up Andrea Levy's Small Island, a storming masterpiece which is my favourite book of the year so far. And 'luvvie' and 'pompous' aren't really reactions to the books, I presume, but to the critics - and you can't blame the book for what the critics say about it.
)
