I Need Your Help, Please – When Were You Last Enchanted?

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AgentPete

AgentPete

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As regular Huddlers will know, I’m currently developing a new writing concept I’m calling “The Enchantment”.

I use the term in a rather older sense than simply “charming”, “glamorous” or “cute”, viz:

c. 1300, enchauntement, "act of magic or witchcraft; use of magic; magic power," from Old French encantement "magical spell; song, concert, chorus".

Or even:

"Art or act of enchanting by uttering magical words, with ceremonies supposed to have magical power; the formula of words or the ceremony employed," late 14c., from Old French incantacion "spell, exorcism" (13c.), from Late Latin incantationem (nominative incantatio) "art of enchanting," noun of action from past-participle stem of incantare "to bewitch, charm, cast a spell upon, chant magic over, sing spells".

Why?

Because I think this is a good, accurate and helpful term to use about the process by which a writer seduces a reader into committing to, and emotionally investing in, their book.

Litopians will be very familiar with my concept of “cookies”, which I hope is proving useful to you in your work.

But The Enchantment is rather different.

It describes what happens in the first few pages, and sometimes first few chapters, of any book that engages with you powerfully, viscerally and won’t let go.

Cookies are often involved – but not always.

Sometimes, it’s an aching evocation of place, time, character or nostalgia. Sometimes it’s a voice that speaks to you with such devastating clarity that you’re stunned.

And sometimes, it’s much less easy to define.

So help me, please, by giving me below the very best examples of The Enchantment that you’ve ever encountered. From the books that have cast their spells on you.

I need their titles, links (e.g. to Amazon) and if you can, the first few pages either as a pdf or simply pasted into your post.

Here’s a tip. Any book that you’ve read more than once is a likely candidate. And anything you’ve read more than three times is a cert.

I’ll be picking this up and developing it further in tomorrow’s Huddle, so do join us!
 
I can't remember when I was last enchanted, but I can easily remember when I was first enchanted.

Food Writing - Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (actually a novel)
Travel Writing - On The Road by Jack Kerouac (actually not a novel)
Fiction - Trout Fishing In America by Richard Brautigan

Trout Fishing In America also gets my nod for most incredible title and Nightwood by Djuna Barnes takes it for one word title.
 
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt. (The book, NOT the film.)
Simply not like anything else I'd ever read before. Madly atmospheric non-fiction.

Berendt is excellent at titles. City of Falling Angels (Falling, not Fallen)is a bit less enchanting, even given it's about Venice, the real run-down, tattered splendour parts.

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ooh, a book that immediately came to mind was This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp. https://www.amazon.com/This-Where-Ends-Marieke-Nijkamp/dp/1492671118

"10:00 a.m.: The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m.: The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03 a.m.: The auditorium doors won't open.

10:05 a.m.: Someone starts shooting."

a fantastically harrowing read; i've come back to it at least a dozen times.
 
Recently, Project Hail Mary. I couldn't stop. But that was an audio book. I was very late to the game with Discworld. It actually wasn't the first couple page, it was a book and a half in when I realized, thank god, he wrote 40.
I was not expecting it, either time, which I think is central to enchantment.
I remember that feeling, seeing Les Mis in London back in the day, being completely overwhelmed. I remember the first time i stepped around a corner and came face to face with Two Sisters(on a terrace), by Renoir. Time stopped. Same thing happened with Otto Dix' war triptych.
 
Promise At Dawn. Memoir. Romain Gary. Born Roman Kacew in Lithuania 1914. Died in Paris, of a self inflicted gunshot wound in 1980. Where does one even start with this book. Have read it many times since my teens. Beautiful, funny, and tragic beyond measure. The people he met along the way, carrying their stories along with his own. The New Yorker called him a liar. But that critic can go and do one. Even if every last word was a lie, and how would he know, point-scoring inchworm - it takes away nothing. Fact, truth. Poetic truth. Go measure some marigolds.


CHAPTER 7

Not all the members of the audience found so screamingly funny the dramatic revelation of my future greatness made by my mother to the tenants of Number 16, Grand Pohulanka. There was among them a certain Mr. Piekielny—which in Polish means “infernal.” I do not know in what circumstances the ancestors of this excellent man came by such an unusual name, and perhaps there were some among them who did something to deserve it. But not so our neighbor. Mr. Piekielny looked like a melancholy mouse, meticulously clean and with a gentle, preoccupied air. He was as self-effacing as a man can be when, by force of nature, he is compelled to rise, if only so little, above the surface of the earth. He was an impressionable soul, and the complete assurance with which my mother had launched her prophecy, laying her hand on my head in the best biblical manner, had a profound and lasting effect upon him. Whenever he passed me on the stairs, he gave me a serious and respectful look. Once or twice he ventured to pat my head. He gave me a dozen lead soldiers and a cardboard Foreign Legion fort. Then, one day, he took me into his flat, where he plied me with pastry and Turkish delight. While I stuffed myself to the bursting point—who can say what tomorrow may bring?—the little fellow sat on the edge of the chair facing me, stroking his goatee stained yellow with nicotine. He invited me several times—and then one day came the moving request, the cry of the heart, the confession of the devouring and proud ambition which this kindly human mouse had been carrying hidden beneath his vest.

“When you become . . .”

He looked away with an embarrassed stare, as though conscious of his naïveté and yet unable to control it:

“When you become . . . everything your mother says . . .”

I studied him with absorbed attention. I had eaten the raisin cake but I had as yet scarcely touched the box of Turkish delight. I guessed instinctively that I had no right to it except by reason of the dazzling future which my mother had predicted for me.

“I’m going to be a French Ambassador,” I said with complete self-assurance.

“Have some more Turkish delight,” said Mr. Piekielny, pushing the box toward me.

I helped myself. He coughed discreetly.

“Mothers,” he remarked, “have a way of feeling these things. Perhaps you will really be someone of true importance. . . . Perhaps you will meet the famous and the great of this world. . . .”

He leaned across and laid his hand on my knee.

“Well then, when you meet them, when you talk to them, promise me one thing. Promise me to tell them . . .”

His voice shook a little and there was a wild, crazy light of hope in the eyes of the mouse: “Tell them there was once a Mr. Piekielny who lived at Number 16, Grand Pohulanka, in Vilna. . . .”

He stared into my eyes with a dumb look of supplication. His hand was still resting on my knee. I ate my Turkish delight, gazing at him for a while without committing myself, and then I nodded briefly.

At the end of the war, in England, where I had gone to continue the struggle after the fall of France, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, mother of the present sovereign, came to inspect my squadron at the Hartford Bridge Airfield. When she stopped opposite me and, with the sweet smile which had made her so deservedly popular, asked from what part of France I came, I tactfully answered “from Nice,” so as not to complicate matters unnecessarily for Her Gracious Majesty. Then something happened in me. I could almost see the little man jumping up and down, stamping his feet and tearing at his goatee in a desperate attempt to attract my attention and remind me of my promise. I tried to choke back the words, but they rose unbidden to my lips, and, suddenly determined to fulfill the dream of greatness of one little mouse at least, I heard myself announce to the Queen in a loud and perfectly audible voice:

“At Number 16, Grand Pohulanka, in the town of Vilna there lived a certain Mr. Piekielny. . . .”

Her Majesty politely inclined her head and moved on. The officer commanding the “Lorraine” Squadron, my dear friend Henri de Rancourt, shot at me, as he followed her, a venomous look.

But I didn’t care: I had at last earned my Turkish delight.

The friendly mouse of Vilna long ago terminated his tiny existence in a Nazi crematorium, along with several million other European Jews.

I, however, continue scrupulously to keep my promise in my various encounters with the great ones of the earth. From the United Nations building in New York to the French Embassy in London, from the Federal Palace in Berne to the Elysée in Paris, from Charles de Gaulle and Vishinsky to ambassadors and high dignitaries everywhere, I have never failed to mention the existence of the little man, and during my years in America I often had the pleasure of telling millions of television viewers that at Number 16, Grand Pohulanka in Vilna, there lived a certain Mr. Piekielny, may God bless his soul.

But what has been done cannot be undone,the little man’s bones, transformed into soap.

I still have a passion for Turkish delight. However, since my mother always saw me as a combination of Lord Byron, Garibaldi, d’Annunzio, d’Artagnan, Robin Hood and Richard the Lion-hearted, I now have to keep a watchful eye upon my waistline. I have not been able to achieve any of the immortal deeds which she expected of me, but at least I have managed not to develop too prominent a paunch. Every day I twist and turn on the floor and twice a week I go for a run—I run, I run, I run—oh, how I run!—but somehow I never manage either to reach, or to leave behind—I don’t know which. I also indulge in other attempts at mastery—fencing, archery, target shooting, weight lifting, writing, juggling: it is, I agree, rather foolish, in your forty-fifth year, to believe everything your mother told and foretold you, but I can’t help that. I was to be a shining hero, a champion of the world, and what is left of me today still keeps trying, longing, remembering. I have not succeeded in reforming the world, in defeating the gods of stupidity, of prejudice, of hatred, in establishing a reign of dignity and justice among men, but I did win the ping-pong tournament in Nice in 1932, and so I can say that I have truly done my best. "


This book is like a primal scream. The anguish, the hunger, the observation and the warmth- That's the spell, the glamour, the enchantment.
 
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern pretty much had me at Hello.

I'm a sucker for anything where the opening promises mystery, and maybe some magic, and also hints that I'm not going to be able to second-guess anything and will just be swept away. Perfection.

Here's the link. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Circus-Erin-Morgenstern/dp/0099554798

And here's the opening section. There was no way I could put this book down after reading this.

ANTICIPATION

The circus arrives without warning.

No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.

But it is not open for business. Not just yet.

Within hours everyone in town has heard about it. By afternoon the news has spread several towns over. Word of mouth is a more effective method of advertisement than typeset words and exclamation points on paper pamphlets or posters. It is impressive and unusual news, the sudden appearance of a mysterious circus. People marvel at the staggering height of the tallest tents. They stare at the clock that sits just inside the gates that no one can properly describe.

And the black sign painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, the one that reads:

Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn

"What kind of circus is only open at night?" people ask. No one has a proper answer, yet as dusk approaches there is a substantial crowd of spectators gathering outside the gates.

You are amongst them, of course. Your curiosity got the better of you, as curiosity is wont to do. You stand in the fading light, the scarf around your neck pulled up against the chilly evening breeze, waiting to see for yourself exactly what kind of circus only opens once the sun sets.

The ticket booth clearly visible behind the gates is closed and barred. The tents are still, save for when they ripple ever so slightly in the wind. The only movement within the circus is the clock that ticks by the passing minutes, if such a wonder of sculpture can even be called a clock.

The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.

The sun disappears completely beyond the horizon, and the remaining luminosity shifts from dusk to twilight. The people around you are growing restless from waiting, a sea of shuffling feet, murmuring about abandoning the endeavor in search of someplace warmer to pass the evening. You yourself are debating departing when it happens.

First, there is a popping sound. It is barely audible over the wind and conversation. A soft noise like a kettle about to boil for tea. Then comes the light.

All over the tents, small lights begin to flicker, as though the entirety of the circus is covered in particularly bright fireflies. The waiting crowd quiets as it watches this display of illumination. Someone near you gasps. A small child claps his hands with glee at the sight.

When the tents are all aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign appears.

Stretched across the top of the gates, hidden in curls of iron, more firefly-like lights flicker to life. They pop as they brighten, some accompanied by a shower of glowing white sparks and a bit of smoke. The people nearest to the gates take a few steps back.

At first, it is only a random pattern of lights. But as more of them ignite, it becomes clear that they are aligned in scripted letters. First a C is distinguishable, followed by more letters. A q, oddly, and several e's. When the final bulb pops alight, and the smoke and sparks dissipate, it is finally legible, this elaborate incandescent sign. Leaning to your left to gain a better view, you can see that it reads:

Le Cirque des Rêves

Some in the crowd smile knowingly, while others frown and look questioningly at their neighbors. A child near you tugs on her mother's sleeve, begging to know what it says.

"The Circus of Dreams," comes the reply. The girl smiles delightedly.

Then the iron gates shudder and unlock, seemingly by their own volition. They swing outward, inviting the crowd inside.

Now the circus is open.

Now you may enter.
 
Here's 2 SFF ones for your list:

Fave: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - had me from the start.
Chapter 1 here: Project Hail Mary Excerpt: Read free excerpt of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Most recent: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin - this book did not grab me from the start, but once it did... I was gripped until the end, and I am still gripped a week after finishing it. It is a masterful telling of a complex story. Once the enchantment hit me full force, I was (and am) astounded at it's brilliance.
Amazon link here.
I found the book online here: The Fifth Season (But I can't vouch for this site. and it's very slow)
The prologue was confusing on the first read, I found. But re-reading it gives me chills. Here's a little taste...

Prologue
You are here.

LET’S START WITH THE END of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.

First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche’s broken little body with a blanket—except his face, because he is afraid of the dark—and she will sit beside it numb, and she will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She’s old hat at this by now.

What she thinks then, and thereafter, is: But he was free.

And it is her bitter, weary self that answers this almost-question every time her bewildered, shocked self manages to produce it:

He wasn’t. Not really. But now he will be.

* * *

But you need context. Let’s try the ending again, writ continentally.

Here is a land.

It is ordinary, as lands go. Mountains and plateaus and canyons and river deltas, the usual. Ordinary, except for its size and its dynamism. It moves a lot, this land. Like an old man lying restlessly abed it heaves and sighs, puckers and farts, yawns and swallows. Naturally this land’s people have named it the Stillness. It is a land of quiet and bitter irony.

The Stillness has had other names. It was once several other lands. It’s one vast, unbroken continent at present, but at some point in the future it will be more than one again.

Very soon now, actually.

The end begins in a city: the oldest, largest, and most magnificent living city in the world. The city is called Yumenes, and once it was the heart of an empire. It is still the heart of many things, though the empire has wilted somewhat in the years since its first bloom, as empires do.

Yumenes is not unique because of its size. There are many large cities in this part of the world, chain-linked along the equator like a continental girdle. Elsewhere in the world villages rarely grow into towns, and towns rarely become cities, because all such polities are hard to keep alive when the earth keeps trying to eat them… but Yumenes has been stable for most of its twenty-seven centuries.

Yumenes is unique because here alone have human beings dared to build not for safety, not for comfort, not even for beauty, but for bravery. The city’s walls are a masterwork of delicate mosaics and embossing detailing its people’s long and brutal history. The clumping masses of its buildings are punctuated by great high towers like fingers of stone, hand-wrought lanterns powered by the modern marvel of hydroelectricity, delicately arching bridges woven of glass and audacity, and architectural structures called balconies that are so simple, yet so breathtakingly foolish, that no one has ever built them before in written history. (But much of history is unwritten. Remember this.) The streets are paved not with easy-to-replace cobbles, but with a smooth, unbroken, and miraculous substance the locals have dubbed asphalt. Even the shanties of Yumenes are daring, because they’re just thin-walled shacks that would blow over in a bad windstorm, let alone a shake. Yet they stand, as they have stood, for generations.

At the core of the city are many tall buildings, so it is perhaps unsurprising that one of them is larger and more daring than all the rest combined: a massive structure whose base is a star pyramid of precision-carved obsidian brick. Pyramids are the most stable architectural form, and this one is pyramids times five because why not? And because this is Yumenes, a vast geodesic sphere whose faceted walls resemble translucent amber sits at the pyramid’s apex, seeming to balance there lightly—though in truth, every part of the structure is channeled toward the sole purpose of supporting it. It looks precarious; that is all that matters.

The Black Star is where the leaders of the empire meet to do their leaderish things. The amber sphere is where they keep their emperor, carefully preserved and perfect. He wanders its golden halls in genteel despair, doing what he is told and dreading the day his masters decide that his daughter makes a better ornament.

None of these places or people matter, by the way. I simply point them out for context.

But here is a man who will matter a great deal.

You can imagine how he looks, for now. You may also imagine what he’s thinking. This might be wrong, mere conjecture, but a certain amount of likelihood applies nevertheless. Based on his subsequent actions, there are only a few thoughts that could be in his mind in this moment.

He stands on a hill not far from the Black Star’s obsidian walls. From here he can see most of the city, smell its smoke, get lost in its gabble. There’s a group of young women walking along one of the asphalt paths below; the hill is in a park much beloved by the city’s residents. (Keep green land within the walls, advises stonelore, but in most communities the land is fallow-planted with legumes and other soil-enriching crops. Only in Yumenes is greenland sculpted into prettiness.) The women laugh at something one of them has said, and the sound wafts up to the man on a passing breeze. He closes his eyes and savors the faint tremolo of their voices, the fainter reverberation of their footsteps like the wingbeats of butterflies against his sessapinae. He can’t sess all seven million residents of the city, mind you; he’s good, but not that good. Most of them, though, yes, they are there. Here. He breathes deeply and becomes a fixture of the earth. They tread upon the filaments of his nerves; their voices stir the fine hairs of his skin; their breaths ripple the air he draws into his lungs. They are on him. They are in him.

But he knows that he is not, and will never be, one of them.
 
Certain authors have a voice which enchants me...actually gives me a shiver of anticipation by their very prose style...especially those where there is a whiff of otherworldlness and deft lyricism combined with humour:

Helen Dunmore
Margaret Atwood
Kate Atkinson
Joanne Harris
Angela Carter
Isabel Allende
Neil Gaiman

also:
Gerald Durrell

The protagonist/narrator's lugubrious mode of expression and dry sense of humour enchanted me into reading the whole series of Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch.

Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, Leigh Bardugo, and James SA Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) are SFF writers whose world-building reliably enchants me (not to mention the added enchantment of comic whimsy from Terry Pratchett)

These authors are experts at weaving enchanting emotional authenticity into their stories:

Holly Bourne
Emma Robinson
Alice Oseman
Sally Page (her brand of uplit is seriously adorable!)

Stephen King's masterful storytelling is incredibly immersive - definitely enchanting.

The authors I mention are all commercially successful (Sally Page is a newcomer, but her sales are doing well!) which illustrates Peter's point that if you can enchant people with your storytelling , you will find an audience.
Jake E said:
In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered a bad mo
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Such an enchanting opening! I was going to mention this one, but Jake beat me to it.
 
MattScho said:
Recently, Project Hail Mary. I couldn't stop. But that was an audio book. I was very late to the game with Discworld. It actually wasn't the first couple page, it was a book and a half in when I realized, thank god, he wrote 40.
I was not expecting it, either time, which I think is central to enchantment.
I remember that feeling, seeing Les Mis in London back in the day, being completely overwhelmed. I remember the first time i stepped around a corner and came face to face with Two Sisters(on a terrace), by Renoir. Time stopped. Same thing happened with Otto Dix' war triptych.
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Completely agree on PHM - audio too. Didn't want it to end either.
 
Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town (I loved this book - and the first chapter was great, but it was the prologue that initially pulled me into the story.) Here's the link.



The Lottery

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took only about two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Early every morning they would come out from the house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the street to work. The two friends were very different. The one who always steered the way was an obese and dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out wearing a yellow or green polo shirt stuffed sloppily into his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it was colder he wore over this a shapeless gray sweater. His face was round and oily, with half-closed eyelids and lips that curved in a gentle, stupid smile. The other mute was tall. His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He was always immaculate and very soberly dressed.

Every morning the two friends walked silently together until they reached the main street of the town. Then when they came to a certain fruit and candy store they paused for a moment on the sidewalk outside. The Greek, Spiros Antonapoulos, worked for his cousin, who owned this fruit store. His job was to make candies and sweets, uncrate the fruits, and to keep the place clean. The thin mute, John Singer, nearly always put his hand on his friend's arm and looked for a second into his face before leaving him. Then after this good-bye Singer crossed the street and walked on alone to the jewelry store where he worked as a silverware engraver.
 
The one that stands in my mind is Donna Tart's A Secret History, the book hangover after I finished that story was second only to when I finished Robin Hobb's Tawny Man Trilogy (excellent character driven fantasy - highly recommend).

Personally, I'd define "Enchanted" as something I'd happily reread if I had the time to (note: I almost never reread). I'd also include the books I find myself recommending over and over because I loved them so much I want other readers to experience their stories too—e.g. A Secret History, Murderbot, Hail Mary, Realm of the Elderlings, Of Honey and Wildfires, Cradle, A Wirzard's Guide To Defensive Baking, and so on.

In terms of recent reads, I've had a phenomeanally good year of reading so far (I think because I've been catching up on books recommended by word of mouth). And the thing that's struck me most about the books that are begging me not to put them down is their voice and the "cookieness" of the permise. e.g. the more emotions it evokes (usually curiosity), the more I'm pulled in.

I'm currently reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's a LitRPG novel (i.e. the characters experience the world like it's a game), it's a far cry from Literature with a capital L. It's utterly ridiculous, but wow, it's SO MUCH FUN. I'm reading (and listening in the car) in every spare minute I have. The premise: all human structures (buildings, cars, etc) get "squished" into the Earth's core by aliens who have reclaimed Earth's rare materials on some tecnicality in Earth's independence. Nearly all of humanity is killed. Carl survived because he was outside, trying to get his ex's cat out of a tree in the middle of the night—in a pair of boxers, pink crocs, and a leather jacket no less. The only way to reclaim earth's independence: beat the alien dungeon the alien's have installed under the earth for a universal reality TV show—in his boxes and pink crocs, and with his ex's cat. (Like I said, it's ridiculous. But I CANNOT stop reading.) Will this story stick with me like A Secret History or Robin Hobb's Tawny Man series? That remains to be seen.

LJ Beck said:
Most recent: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
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One of my all time favourites. Funny thing though - first time I read it, I wasn't taken with it AT ALL. Only when I came back to it as a more mature reader did it really resonate.
 
This is not a definitive list but the first novel i thought of on reading Pete's question was:

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver, literally walks you into the story and the POVs. Masterful.
My other favourite of hers has a striking opening: Demon Copperhead and never lets up.

Other compelling and convincing starts include:

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
Days Without End - Sebastian Barry
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Mr Mercedes - Stephen King (then he does a mean thing, surprise, surprise)
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh (started well, although i got tired of her smarm by <half way through)
NNF Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts - needs a massive edit but atmospheric and engaging from the start
NF Entangled Life - Merlin Sheldrake
 
MattScho said:
I was not expecting it, either time, which I think is central to enchantment.
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Absolutely.

I bought the first Berendt from a second-hand bookshop, battered round the edges, having read his Venice one and not expecting too much. I remember staying up late, reading it, more to keep going than to finish it as it's not exactly a whodunit.
 
More recent book enchantments....Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy totally gripped me. I was already pretty familiar with much of the history. But this writer took me right into that world. I'll read anything by Hilary Mantel really, bless her. Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, based on her own experiences of living in Saudi Arabia (it is a very frightening book)

Beyond Black is about a psychic medium, and maybe this lady has committed murder. Followed about the place by a ghostly eyeball, rolling merrily down the road. Who was once the owner of the eyeball? Maybe they had it coming.

Mantel observed that if she had not become a writer of novels, had she not received a lengthy education, she might have well become a psychic medium herself. In essence, she observed, they are the same thing. I liked this book. I respected it, though I didn't quite love it.

But Wolf Hall, Bring Up The Bodies and The Mirror and The Light, was story telling enchantment in a class by itself. Numinous. Fetched up from a deep well of personal pain, as with Promise At Dawn. Another case of a writer not sparing themselves. She says (see below) how she wept, going round the supermarket with her trolley, because it was time to put to death Thomas Cromwell. The last page finally written, and what a Herculean haul, she was woken in the night by a crash. A picture had fallen off the wall. Only a picture. Of Henry V111 (the b*stard- that legacy is writ LARGE here in Lancashire, the places where they hanged the abbots- and I am no church lover).

An interview with Mantel from The New Statesman-

" writers don’t always begin at the beginning, and end at the end. Sometimes the unconscious, having staged a coup, puts paid to simple chronology. And so it was with Thomas Cromwell, whose death, it transpires, Hilary Mantel drafted even before she’d completed the first book of her trilogy about him (Wolf Hall came out in 2009; the books trace the career of Henry VIII’s chief minister from 1527, when he is Cardinal Wolsey’s right-hand man, until 1540 when, following the king’s disastrous fourth marriage to Anne of Cleeves, a warrant for his execution is signed). “One day, you see, it came to me how to do it,” she says. It was all a bit unfortunate. She was in Sainsbury’s with her husband, a realm not usually inhabited by Tudor ghosts. “We got to the checkout and I started to cry. I cried really hard, on our groceries and on my hands; they were all wet as I pushed things along the belt. We paid, and I sniffed, and then I went home, and I wrote a draft – several drafts – and then I put them away. When it came to the day, many years later, that I had to write the scene, all I had to do was pull out those drafts.” She looks at me carefully. “I wrote it, and something inside said, ‘Now leave it to me.’”
 
Nikky Lee said:
I'm currently reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's a LitRPG novel (i.e. the characters experience the world like it's a game), it's a far cry from Literature with a capital L. It's utterly ridiculous, but wow, it's SO MUCH FUN.
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I have this audible book. It's on my "Up Next" list. I might have to bump it up the queue from your recommend!

Nikky Lee said:
One of my all time favourites. Funny thing though - first time I read it, I wasn't taken with it AT ALL. Only when I came back to it as a more mature reader did it really resonate.
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Make sense. I do think being a mature reader is a prerequisite to fully appreciating this one.
 
The Colour Purple, for the sickening, heart-wrenching emotion it evokes, the depth of empathy.

You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.

DEAR GOD,

I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is
happening to me.

Last spring after little Lucious come I heard them fussing. He was pulling on her arm. She say It too soon, Fonso, I ain’t
well. Finally he leave her alone. A week go by, he pulling on her arm again. She say Naw, I ain’t gonna. Can’t you see I’m
already half dead, an all of these children.

She went to visit her sister doctor over Macon. Left me to see after the others. He never had a kine word to say to me.
Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t. First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around.
Then he grab hold my titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me, saying
You better shut up and git used to it.
But I don’t never git used to it. And now I feels sick every time I be the one to cook. My mama she fuss at me an look at
me. She happy, cause he good to her now. But too sick to last long.
 
Claire G said:
The Colour Purple, for the sickening, heart-wrenching emotion it evokes, the depth of empathy.

You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.

DEAR GOD,

I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is
happening to me.

Last spring after little Lucious come I heard them fussing. He was pulling on her arm. She say It too soon, Fonso, I ain’t
well. Finally he leave her alone. A week go by, he pulling on her arm again. She say Naw, I ain’t gonna. Can’t you see I’m
already half dead, an all of these children.

She went to visit her sister doctor over Macon. Left me to see after the others. He never had a kine word to say to me.
Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t. First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around.
Then he grab hold my titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me, saying
You better shut up and git used to it.
But I don’t never git used to it. And now I feels sick every time I be the one to cook. My mama she fuss at me an look at
me. She happy, cause he good to her now. But too sick to last long.
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Totally agree, it’s my absolute favourite book.
 
Soooo, have just heard Hannah nail what I think all of these examples may have in common. Because I notice that what truly excites one person does not necessarily have the same pull on someone else.
The magic word is emotion (thanks for that, Hannah).
My favourite books give me the emotional experience that I, personally, want in a book.
Your emotional wish-list may be different to mine (I want escapism, and magic, and to feel I've been on a journey, and learnt something about myslef and the human condition). You may want excitement, or to have your intelligence tested through your skill at solving a mystery.
But whatever it is, that is the hook we each respond to.
 
Jake E said:
Restaurant at the end of the universe; Douglas Adams.

In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered a bad move.
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Love this and have to add:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

Adams, Douglas. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Trilogy in Five Parts (p. 16). Pan Macmillan UK. Kindle Edition.

Amazon

Have to also add:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. "My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?" Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. "But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it." Mr. Bennet made no answer. "Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently. "You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it." This was invitation enough.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice (p. 3). Kindle Edition.

Amazon

Vagabond Heart said:
My favourite books give me the emotional experience that I, personally, want in a book.
Click to expand...

Totally this. And I'd add, it depends on your mood.
 
Enchantment has connotations of the fantastical, but as you say in the opening post, it's not exclusively that. And I'm relieved because I struggle with that kind of fiction a lot of the time, cynic that I am.

I am enchanted by books, though. Honestly I am. In spite of my cynicism.

A recent example for me is Lessons by Ian McEwan

--- This was insomniac memory, not a dream. It was the piano lesson again – an orange-tiled floor, one high window, a new upright in a bare room close to the sickbay. He was eleven years old, attempting what others might know as Bach’s first prelude from Book One of The Well-tempered Clavier, simplified version, but he knew nothing of that. He didn’t wonder whether it was famous or obscure. It had no when or where. He could not conceive that someone had once troubled to write it. The music was simply here, a school thing, or dark, like a pine forest in winter, exclusive to him, his private labyrinth of cold sorrow. It would never let him leave. The teacher sat close by him on the long stool. Round-faced, erect, perfumed, strict. Her beauty lay concealed behind her manner. She never scowled or smiled. Some boys said she was mad, but he doubted that. He made a mistake in the same place, the one he always made, and she leaned closer to show him. Her arm was firm and warm against his shoulder, her hands, her painted nails, were right above his lap. He felt a terrible tingling draining his attention. ‘Listen. It’s an easy rippling sound.’ But as she played, he heard no easy rippling. Her perfume overwhelmed his senses and deafened him. It was a rounded cloying scent, like a hard object, a smooth river stone, pushing in on his thoughts. Three years later he learned it was rosewater. ‘Try again.’ She said it on a rising tone of warning. She was musical, he was not. He knew that her mind was elsewhere and that he bored her with his insignificance – another inky boy in a boarding school. His fingers were pressing down on the tuneless keys. He could see the bad place on the page before he reached it, it was happening before it happened, the mistake was coming towards him, arms outstretched like a mother, ready to scoop him up, always the same mistake coming to collect him without the promise of a kiss. And so it happened. His thumb had its own life. Together, they listened to the bad notes fade into the hissing silence. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered to himself. Her displeasure came as a quick exhalation through her nostrils, a reverse sniff he had heard before. Her fingers found his inside leg, just at the hem of his grey shorts, and pinched him hard. That night there would be a tiny blue bruise. Her touch was cool as her hand moved up under his shorts to where the elastic of his pants met his skin. He scrambled off the stool and stood, flushed. ‘Sit down. You’ll start again!’ Her sternness wiped away what had just happened. It was gone and he already doubted his memory of it. He hesitated before yet another of those blinding encounters with the ways of adults. They never told you what they knew. They concealed from you the boundaries of your ignorance. What happened, whatever it was, must be his fault and disobedience was against his nature. So he sat, lifted his head to the sullen column of treble clefs where they hung on the page and he set off again, even more unsteadily than before. There could be no rippling, not in this forest. Too soon he was nearing that same bad place. Disaster was certain and knowing that confirmed it as his idiot thumb went down when it should have stayed still. He stopped. The lingering discord sounded like his name spoken out loud. She took his chin between knuckle and thumb and turned his face towards hers. Even her breath was scented. Without shifting her eyes from his, she reached for the twelve-inch ruler from the piano lid. He was not going to let her smack him but as he slid from the stool he didn’t see what was coming. She caught him on his knee, with the edge, not the flat, and it stung. He moved a step back. ‘You’ll do as you’re told and sit down.’



It's a huge book, but I was gripped, and devoured the thing in a few days.
Some novels I like, but they take weeks. Maybe for me, that's the difference.
Maybe that's emotion, as others have suggested.
 
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