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randallsquared comments on Negative and Positive Selection - Less Wrong
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I once got this feeling reading Stephen R. Donaldson's The Runes of the Earth - that this was a level of writing that was way beyond what I could see myself reaching. Oddly, I didn't get this feeling when reading Terry Pratchett, even though I still think that Terry Pratchett is probably a better writer than, say, Shakespeare.
And I don't know what people see in American Gods - I've read over one hundred books I think were better. And I mean that literally; if I spent a day doing it, I could actually go through my bookshelves and write down a list of one hundred and one books I liked more. I couldn't do that for most of Terry Pratchett's novels.
I've read many, many books I liked more than many books which I would consider "better" in a general sense. From the context of the discussion, I'd think "were better" was the meaning you meant. Alternatively, maybe you don't experience such a discrepancy between what you like and what you believe is "good writing"?
A book can be well written and still be bad because of other flaws. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was very well written in a technical sense, but the story itself was boring as hell and Hawthorne's skill couldn't save it.