A really good writer can totally engage you and enchant you. Using words strung together in sentences, a really good writer can convey their intelligence, their wit; they can share their sensibility, their consciousness.
If you read them often, you realize you are entering another world, even if they are writing about the world as you know it. You are looking through new, other eyes. You feel you "know" them, you look forward to seeing their sentences and paragraphs.
A really good writer is among the best people you "know," people who have enriched your life, opened your eyes, made you laugh, or cry, or scratch your head. You feel you've learned something; you may have been enlightened, or amused. Sometimes it's just little things, one line, one word, one image that leaves you feeling differently.
It doesn't matter what they are writing about, if they are really good, you find you are interested in what they are interested. What's amazing about a really good writer, they can tackle subjects you absolutely aren't interested in, and well, you read them, and find that maybe you were wrong, there is something worthwhile to think about, contemplate, learn.
David Carr, who wrote about the media for the the New York Times was that kind of really good writer. He died this week, suddenly, in the news room. Shocking, sad. I will really, really miss him - a really good writer.