Personally I come from an age where everything about reading a book was an act of blind faith, a risk that started with picking it up and hoping you’d like it. We didn’t get a list of tropes or a bunch of comps to tv shows and popular songs.
Just a brief, non-specific blurb in the back and a cover that sometimes had nothing but a hand holding an apple on it or a bird with an arrow.
That was it.
So I’m not in the habit of questioning an author on page 7 or even on page 207. I think about it after I’ve closed the book, take out my notebook and dump all my thoughts onto the page. I read it again and decipher it with pen and annotation tabs.
And even then, I’m not asking is the author terrible at writing. I just decide if I liked it or not. Was it a good read for me? What was I impressed with and what did I find lacking.
I’ve never left a book review in my life, let alone one to be accompanied by something as dehumanizing as a star rating.
But I digress. I’ll always trust an author, always ask questions, always wait for the ride to pan out, for the small odd detail to mean something more and wonder what secret they were trying to tell me when the girl who gets hives from attention constantly seeks it out.
Because oftentimes, it really is that deep.
a month agoashslayswrites
This is The Take. *whew* I’m sure it’s something to do with outrage culture on the internet and the ability to get mad behind a screen, but I’m Tired, Boss.
a month agonoa.is.writing
🙌 i think this is why it’s so important to take time to sit with + digest what you’ve read before you come to any conclusions!! too often we feel like we have to fast-finish reading/consuming books + put an opinion out there before we even have a finished thought!!
a month agobleeding.inks
I agree with you. But how do you differentiate between an actual mistake and an intentional decision? And if the decision was intentional but we don’t agree with it, are we allowed to express that opposition? Also, love the way you talk! ❤️
a month agopoems.by.emreid
YES the message the world needs 👏🏼👏🏼 bring back analyzing every single tiny detail of a book because it is almost always is intentional.
a month agoa.noha.author
Natrator/MC claiming to hate someone but noting attractive qualities - intentional, she's in denial . Narrator claiming a social norm but it is never shown through actions of others - inconsistency . 1st person narrator claiming *in their own head* that they don't know who the murderer could be when they themselves are the murderer - lying to the reader for shock value . I suck at understanding subtext, so I give some leeway to books that confuse me in a way I can attribute to probably-just-the-tism. I strongly dislike when something like social norms is set up but never followed through on or rather than an unreliable narrator we have one lying in their own head to the reader. Katniss is someone I consider a good unreliable narrator, we see the world filtered through her eyes and can extrapolate from it, her "lies" are usually lack of belief in herself, difficulty with the world she grew up in. The inconsistencies are typically what she's told as a child versus what she finds out as an adult as she learns about the lies/propoganda. The main character in one of the murder mystery novels I read this year was the murderer, was 100% aware of this, and yet up until the end where she explains how she did anything and how proud she is of it, she consistently denies knowing anything about it in her own head to herself, and it was super irritating because… That's literally just to confuse the reader? No one who is fully aware and proud of plotting and carrying out a murder, cover, and framing is going to be trying to puzzle together the culprit.
a month agosatansaidnottoday
And the reverse is also true! I don't know which caused the other. But authors don't trust us to understand even the most basic of metaphors, and I'm beginning to think they are right!
a month agokikitolynn
*dies in ‘you got the name wrong’* - to be fair, everyone that’s said this to me did so with very well meanings and its sweet that they did- BUT, I didn’t make a mistake 😭 it’s intentional for reasons 😈
a month agoyourbestdee
The barrier to entry for publishing novels is nonexistent now that self-publishing is more prevalent. (I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad thing, but it is important.) Traditionally, an author could write something, edit it, that story be reviewed and edited again by an agent, read again and edited by an editor, and then edited again through a copyeditor before the work went out to the masses. When we, as readers, knew a work had several eyes on it before it got to us it was a lot easier to trust that inconsistencies were narrative choice and not error. That just isn’t the case anymore. And though, yes my reasoning still applies to most literary works published through traditional publishing today, because in the bookish zeitgeist trad-pub intermingles with self-pub (where narrative trust hasn’t quite been earned due to the varying levels of editorial work), all books/authors receive more scrutiny instead of faith. Didn’t mean to type a novel but I’ve been thinking about this for the past few weeks 😭
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