Back in college several of us would gather in the common area of our dorm suite and watch the community television. I honestly can’t remember if people had TVs in their rooms–if they were even allowed. But there was a tv in the area that 8 of us shared and we usually gathered there like an ersatz family. There was one girl who would plop down with her scissors and bridal magazines, readying to cut out all the pictures of the wedding she was going to have with her boyfriend back home. She’d watch the show we all were watching but then make loud comments about not knowing why we bothered and wasn’t it pointless and so on. We were forever treated to a running commentary about how stupid the show was. When I finally asked her why she watched if it bugged her that much she replied “because it’s on right in the middle of everything.”
Between magazine ads and lurid covers and word of mouth there seem to be a few books that are on right in the middle of everything. And more and more often there seem to be a lot of Julies, who take up those books in an adversarial stance. I mean, honestly. Goodness knows there are books I’ve hated. (Gone Girl being a recent example.) Fortunately the books I’ve loved–or at the very least ENJOYED–outnumber the disliked books by about 10:1.
But now there’s Hate-reading. It’s nothing more than the mean-spirited act of finding a book you don’t enjoy and then reading it to pick it apart and mock. The most popular reviews on Goodreads and book-review blogs are Hate-read reviews that make an art of running down the primary work.
I’ll grant you that many times the primary work is demonstrably awful. In those cases, however, I don’t understand the point of giving them your time. As noble as people make it sound*, you’re still wasting your time on something you hate. I’m a critical person in the sense that it is in my nature to analyse any system or work for flaws or areas of improvement. Over the years I’ve tried very hard to train my critical nature into its most constructive possible form. It doesn’t always work, but my hope is that when I say something as a criticism I do so in what I believe to be a helpful manner. That means I’m not going to spend hours of my life on the 50 Shades series just so I can write a pithy Hate-read article about it.
Reading is growing in popularity again, thanks to Kindles and sex and the burgeoning popularity of YA. Busy folks are dialing back into the pleasure of leisure reading and you’d think as a writer I’d be grateful and pleased. Honestly, though, I’m starting to wish that all the people who have returned to reading would go back to whatever it was they used to do. If they’re just going to pick up books for the purposes of having a whole new crop of things to ridicule I want them to go away.
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*Few things bug me as much as people who say “I just have to finish a book once I start it.” My husband and sister both do this and it makes me nuts. No. You don’t “have” to. There isn’t a law. No one is killing your auntie if you put the thing aside. You will never have enough time to read all the good books in the world. If you’ve got a book you don’t like just walk away. It’s not noble to keep reading it. It’s not a sign of good character. IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN A BLEEDING WASTE OF VALUABLE, PRECIOUS TIME.
I’m not only good at not-finishing books, I’m a world champion at buying them and not-starting them, as well! You could fill a library with books I’ve not-finished and not-started.
And, indeed, I have.
But the books I /have/ read to completion (and started, natch), I enjoyed, some of them very much.
You will never have enough time to read all the good books in the world.
A fact I have been keenly aware of since adolescence…and which has always depressed me!
I, too, am a champion of “buying and not starting”
I’ve gotten a lot better at being willing to abandon books I don’t enjoy–I used to have that “I have to finish” mindset, but not anymore. Yet, some of my favorite books were awful at the start and took a LONG time to get into. If I’d abandoned those, I would have missed out for sure.
I understand the “have to finish” mindset. For me it’s a combination of, even if I don’t like what’s happening, I still want to know how it turns out and a fear that it’s ABOUT to get really good and if I quit now I’ll miss out. Only book I ever recall starting but not finishing was Michael Crichton’s Congo.
I’m pretty good at abandoning a book if I decide it’s really not clicking for me. But it depends — have I enjoyed other books by the writer? Do people whose judgment I generally trust praise it? Is it required for a class or reading group? If the answer to any of those questions is “yes,” then I’ll slog on with it. Of course, if I’m reading it for a class or a group, I’ll have the opportunity to tell people how much I hate it, so there’s that. Which may express the prevalence of hate-reading: if you have wasted that many hours of your life on a dreadful book, you may want to tell the world about it.
Disturbing thought, but there are 300k+ published every year in America according to UNESCO. (I think that number is way small, but that’s just me.) That means that even if we read a book a day, we’re missing out on well over 99% of the books published every year.
I used to think I had to finish them, too. My thought was that maybe they’d get better, take a turn where I suddenly was okay with everything I had hated (or at least understood why it was there). Then I spent about a year suffering off and on through the VERY Abridged version of Heidi, where I realized I’d kill myself before reading anything of the sort ever again.
I read very fast, so finishing a book usually isn’t an issue even for bad ones. I also read eclectically, with a mix of reading in my genre and random things that catch my eye. This means I read a fair number of bad books.
Unfortunately, while I don’t write hate reviews (I have to at least like the book in concept to buy, and I always buy) I have been snarky on a few because they really, really annoyed me after reading. Or disappointed me. I’ve tried to reign this in, and I haven’t really done so in a while, but ironically I think my most-liked review is a snarky one about a YA book which really rubbed me the wrong way due to banter between the characters. Before goodreads though, I never reviewed books in any form, so it’s been quite a learning experience.
I hope the snarky reviewers just calm down some, because some of them are very useful in that they are willing to challenge conventional wisdom and say things that need to be said about many books.But I agree, it’s better not to read or watch something you plan only to savage, or savage the fans for even liking it.