I had a teacher once who claimed that the three questions to ask of any work are (1) what is this artist trying to do, (2) how well is he or she doing it, and (3) is it worth doing. In practice, though, it's hard to get past "what" and "how well": those questions open out into the history of literature and the entire world of human experience. They also imply a critic's claim to omniscience, a claim that I think is unsupportable in most cases and is certainly unsupportable in mine. So, like you, Carol, I'm thrown back on the subjective. I tend to ask myself (1) does this work reduce the distance between me and the writer, and (2) from what I discern from the work itself, is this a writer I want to get closer to. I'd like to be a good enough person to say that nothing human is alien to me, but it ain't so.
RPW
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