{"id":428,"date":"2008-05-01T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2008\/05\/01\/the-book-loved-by-everyone-but-you\/"},"modified":"2008-05-01T08:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-01T08:10:00","slug":"the-book-loved-by-everyone-but-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=428","title":{"rendered":"The Book Loved By Everyone But You"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since so many people appear to have enjoyed confessing to the books they’ve never read<\/a> and\/or their tendencies to peek ahead<\/a>, I thought I’d continue this Post Secret<\/a>-esque theme and invite you to confess something else — the books you know you were "supposed" to love but didn’t. You know — the books EVERYONE loved, EVERYONE thought were the best of the year, EVERYONE told you you "had" to read, so you DID and then wondered what the heck all the fuss was about.<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about doing a post on this subject for months now — at least since last September, which I heard a great piece on Public Radio International’s Studio 360<\/em><\/a>, in which newlywed co-producers Hillary Frank and Jonathan Menjivar set out to produce a story on whether or not Jack Kerouac’s On the Road<\/a><\/em> still resonated with readers. In order to do the piece, though, Hillary had to read the book — her husband’s beloved, dog-eared, foot-noted copy of the book — for the first time. Her reactions to it and the conversation the two have about it is LONG overdue for a mention here. So overdue, in fact, that I’m embedding the audio in this very post, so you don’t even have to click elsewhere to read it. And, YES, the Hillary Frank mentioned here is indeed THAT Hillary Frank<\/a> — the author of the YA novels Better Than Running at Night<\/em> and I Can’t Tell You<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This everyone-loves-it-but-you theme has been haunting me in recent weeks as I keep seeing glowing reviews for a forthcoming book that I have a lot of problems with. I’ve got some objections to elements of the book’s storyline and writing, but mostly am bothered by the fact that I think this book is being marketed to entirely the wrong audience. It’s frustrating for me (somewhat baffling, really) that it keeps receiving reviews that make little or no mention of the things I find so problematic about it.<\/p>\n

I asked some of my colleagues about their experiences with this "everyone loved it but me" phenomenon. One of them confessed that she HATED The Kite Runner<\/em>, which she had listened to on audio. (Her words: "I think part of it is because it was on audio, but I think it’s got stilted writing, an okay story, and you had to have read it while it was timely to appreciate it.")<\/p>\n

Another colleague said Eat, Pray, Love<\/em> really didn’t do it for her: "And when I found out how it ended, it pissed me off."<\/p>\n

A colleague piped up to say she hated Doctor Zhivago<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One of our reps confessed that he hated the ending of The Giver<\/em> by Lois Lowry. (He was enjoying the book until he reached that point.) He also added that he REALLY didn’t like the movie Juno<\/em>, which seems to have made onto almost everyone’s list of recent film favorites.<\/p>\n

What about you? What books have you read that didn’t live up to their hype? Normally I don’t invite this sort of negativity, especially when I know authors are looking on, but in this case I think it’s safe enough, because (as we’ve already established here), everyone ELSE thinks these books are great, right? So, who cares about one little dissenter?<\/p>\n

Except for me, of course. I care. So go on and confess your "I REALLY didn’t like such-and-such" book here, please. And feel free to make up a fake name for yourself if you’d prefer, to make your statements anonymously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since so many people appear to have enjoyed confessing to the books they’ve never read and\/or their tendencies to peek ahead, I thought I’d continue this Post Secret-esque theme and invite you to confess something else — the books you know you were “supposed” to love but didn’t. You know — the books EVERYONE loved, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}