World Story Character

I'm sure I've done a similar post before, but bear with me.  In my eternal quest to try and describe to other people what I like in a book, I think I have narrowed it down to three essential things; World building, story and character.

World Building - For me this is huge, a book that makes me believe in the world I am reading is 50% there in getting me to love the book/series.  This tends to be more essential in books set in fictional worlds, or alternate worlds, but to some degree it is important regardless of the book.  The only time I will give world building a pass is in short stories 'cause they tend to be more about the story and/or character.  A world with parameter's, rules, space, traditions, history, and structure make a place in my head I can go to, even when I am not reading the book.  I find a lot of the books I have the most issues are the ones that skip over plausible world building for the sake of a concept.

Story - A good story is essential to a good book.  I love original stories, twists on old stories and to be honest I even love an old tried and true story as long as it is written well.  With story my only request is that it be well written, to me this means a clear story that goes somewhere, one that does not rely on completely unrealistic happenstances to resolve a sticky issue, and one that does not abruptly end in a haze of sudden departure from the rest of the book.  The stories I have the most trouble with are the ones that over describe everything, ones that meander to the point your not sure what is going on, and ones that rely on a randomly introduced element to wrap things up.  I love surprises, twist endings, and a really solid story.

Character - I love a good character.  I have finished many a book that is not the best based solely on the strength of at least one of it's characters.  In a lot of my older books, my favorite characters tend to be side characters or the villains.  The main characters in these books tend to be fairly straight forward good guys without to many interesting tidbits, but the side character are pretty cool.  Modern books (or at least the ones I like to read) tend to have a wider variety of characters, making the leads more flawed and diverse and utilizing various types of relationships to further define their characters.  I don't mind stereotypical characters as much as some people do, as long as the characters act according to who they are (does that make sense?).  My biggest character pet peeve is when the character acts one way through out the whole book, and then makes some weirdly random decision for no other reason then to further the story.

All three of these things are not needed to make a readable book. Most books can usually hit at least one of these criteria to an acceptable degree.  Good books get two of these and on the rare occasion the best books manage to incorporate all three.   In fact several of my favorite books usually get only two of these taken care of really well.  Oddly enough concept is one of the things I find non-essential in books, I will take a well written, tried and true, solid story over a wildly original, yet poorly executed concept.  Too many times I find world building, story and character development is sacrificed to try and get a concept across.  So there you have it, when I am trying to describe what I love in a book, it is gonna be one or more of these three things.

What is the most important component of a book for you?  Are their important components that I missed?  Are you sick of me trying to continually find the words to describe my feelings on books?