I'm closing my eyes

I saw that you have a draft post going, Bronwen, but I stopped myself from looking.

I scrapped the Hemingway because I forgot where I put the book and took up with Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee instead.

There are those books that make you say "Wow" when you read them, even though you aren't quite sure you could say why. This was one of them. It was a painful book to read, because it's full of reality. Nothing is unambiguous. You feel as though the story could be a true story, because the characters are full of complexity and act as real people do, inexplicably. When I finished the book, there were no definite conclusions but somehow that felt right, because the way the book is written, the reader experiences things as the protagonist (meh on the term...he's a bit of an anti-hero) does, and you know that he just goes on living. But at the same time I felt that maybe I didn't really understand anything at all, and the answers to my questions were in the text, and I was just too ignorant to recognize them.

Which brings me to the question of "getting" a book. After reading the conclusion, most of the time I have this moment when I'm holding my breath, remembering everything I've read and wondering whether I really "got" the book. Then, whether or not I liked it. The former tends to have a heavy impact on the outcome of the latter. If I don't feel like I really understand a book, I can't bring myself to say that I liked it. Not that it isn't a "good" book, in that it is well-written and thought-provoking. But I wouldn't put it on my favorites list, or want to read it again and again. Do any of you distinguish between a good book and a book you liked? Is it necessary to "get" a book for it to be good or likeable?