So I dived back into reading hardcore fantasy on the urging of several who know me. That was about a year and a half ago. Now vie become socraven as to pester the authors of books I loved for their recommendations of what else I should read.
One of those pesterations led me directly to The Lies Of Locke Lamora, which I haven’t read yet, being backed up with rereads in anticipation of the new Rothfuss and the new Martin. But on the strength of that recommendation I passed it along to a friend who is temporarily bookless*. Then I got to thinking I should read another review or two.
Who knew there was a whole controversy surrounding a negative review of the book? A SERIOUS controversy. Short version is that the book was heavily hyped and the reviewer, in what I think was an attempt to be glibly funny, said that she wondered how the authors of the positive reviews had been bribed. All sorts then jumped on the bandwagon about how accusations of bribery verged on payola etc.
I just read one review of the review that was about 2000k words long. My eyes are still glazed over.
The weird thing is that when reading the first half of the controversial first review (I stopped reading when I realized that the grumpy chick was basically just going to summarize the entire as yet u read by me book) I never once thought anything other than that the reviewer was trying to come off as witty.
Today for any number of reasons I hate the Internet. I hate most of all that I so often fail to communicate my position in a way that isnt hurtful to others. I kind of relate to the initial reviewer in that way.
I also hate that people are so eager to get their own agenda on record that they don’t even try to figure out where the original writer was coming from. I’ve been on both sides of that equation.
The Internet is now words about word about words.
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*to me the idea of being bookless is worse than just about anything other than Wellness Livnng Coaches.
You know what? I ended up buying two books on iOS app design instead of the book you recommended. Completely forgot. Also, I’m an idiot.
You know, much of the time you have been rediscovering epic fantasy I have been immersing myself in non-epic fantasy. I may never go back to the epic stuff, I’m enjoying it so much. Once Martin’s book comes out you are going to have to tell me whether it’s worth my reading book #4 and the new one.
Spot on, Kat, and something I’ve been thinking about. I’ve grown so tired of those self-congratulatory comments that use words like “really” (i.e. what’s “really” happening), “face it” (i.e. “face it, you know you’re wrong”), and other self serving phrases that imply that I really have the corner on the market and my-opponent-is-an-idiot-and-I-can-prove-it-simply-by-the-force-of-my-rhetoric responses. Where has civility gone? What about humility? I’m now past 40 and I’ve never once seen anyone argued into changing their mind, yet vicious argument is pretty much the only thing that I see anywhere.
I was talking with a friend not long ago who was espousing the benefits of the nightly table conversation when he was growing up. They’re a family of lawyers and love to argue with each other. When I asked if anyone’s mind had ever been changed by the endless arguments, he looked a little perplexed and said “well, occasionally they’ll tell me that I made a good point”. No mention of any times when HE had ever changed his mind, or if any of the changes were permanent. I pictured a group of stone statues sitting around that table endlessly restating their opinion in an effort to catch their verbal opponent in a logical slip so that they could score points.
There’s a difference between openmindedness and the intellectual mush that comes with accepting everything anyone says, but it seems like most people would rather take a “talk to the hand” attitude than just humbly listen to what other people are saying. This infects our political discourse as well and it depresses me to the point of noncommunication sometimes. I was talking to a friend a few years ago about the death penalty (she’s a Catholic who is strongly against, I’m a Protestant who is somewhat for). At the end of the conversation I simply rephrased her position back to her, stated where she had some points that I didn’t have good responses to, and allowed that I would have to think about her arguments because she may be right.
You would have thought that the roof fell in. She had been all set for a knock-down, drag-out battle of Opinions and I inadvertently Kung-Fu’d her by saying you might be right. Wow.
Where have we come as a society when we cannot acknowledge the possible correctness of our opponent’s arguments? Why must the people we disagree with be cast as evil, heartless, stupid, or sub-human? Why is it such an amazing occurrence when someone listens carefully to a counterargument and actually attempts to glean something useful to modify or even (gasp) change their position? Isn’t this the essence of the “openmindedness” we’re all constantly bragging that we posess? Is everybody always correct in everything? How is that possible?
I believe the old sin of pride is the root of this. We’re too proud to let the other person make a point that might change our mind. We’re too proud to ask the other person’s opinion because we’d rather hear ourselves speak, and we’re far too proud to admit that our worldview might be wrong in any way.