Capitivating?
Mere survival?
If it had been me, could I ever have bothered writing this?
Plot, characters or setting?
Will I remember this book at all? Am I changed at all by it?
(subject to change...)
the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre, and bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects... All great artists and thinkers (are) great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.