Should We Write 'Bad' Reviews?

It's rare that we go into books expecting to dislike them. Unless we're having to read them for school or something along those lines, pretty much every book we pick up should be a book we think we're going to enjoy; we've certainly liked the sound of it enough to pick it up and give it a try, whether we've bought it or borrowed it. Sadly, we can't like everything. Sometimes it's a matter of personal taste, and sometimes the book is just awful for whatever reason, whether it's the content or the way it's written.

So on those occasions when we don't enjoy a book, how do we respond? Should we write 'bad' reviews?

One of the great things about not only bloggers, but people in general, is that, naturally, we all differ. Some bloggers write and share their negative reviews, some write them but don't share them, and some only write reviews which are positive. The most important thing to mention here is that there is no right answer. Every blogger reviews differently, and every blogger has the right to post whatever kind of content they like on their own blog; that's why it frustrates me when I see bloggers apologising at the beginning of a negative review.

When it comes to receiving books to review, some bloggers will only share their review if it's positive because that is what the publisher has requested. I can understand why - you don't tend to see 'it was only okay' on the front of the latest bestseller in much the same way you don't see '90 minutes of my life I'll never get back' on the trailer for the latest blockbuster. As a Marketing Assistant in the publishing industry, I can confirm from experience that publishers are not about to put anything but a glowing review on their website.

Personally, though, I think 'bad' reviews are important. I've written a few myself! I don't think reviewers should feel obligated to say something good about a book they've received from a publisher or an author; we're sent books in exchange for our honest opinion, and if your opinion is more negative than the publisher might like that doesn't mean it's invalid. 

I don't have a problem at all with publishers requesting that reviewers don't post a negative review while the book is being publicised - just because I didn't like a book doesn't mean someone else won't, after all - but once that window of publicity is gone, there's nothing wrong with sharing a negative review.

I think the most important thing about writing a negative review is knowing the difference between giving an honest review and being cruel. I'm a writer myself; I'm not a published novelist, so I'm no expert, but I can easily imagine how it might feel to see a very negative review of something you've poured your heart and soul into creating. Authors must know that when a reviewer criticises a book they aren't criticising them.

Reviewers don't write negative reviews just for the sake of being negative - we want to like the books we read very much! But if we don't we have the right to explain why.

Plus let's not forget that it's in very, very rare cases that reviewers can find nothing positive to say about a book. I can usually find one or two things I liked about a book I wasn't overly keen on, even if it's just something as simple as liking the way the dialogue was written.

Personally, I find negative reviews quite helpful. I sound like such a granny, but these days when I go onto Goodreads the first few reviews just seem to be full of GIFs and exclamation marks and claims of 'book boyfriend 5ever'. Obviously this isn't always the case, but I do see it a lot, and that is not a helpful review. Negative reviews, if nothing else, are honest, and I'd much rather read a fair and balanced review than anything else, because they're much more likely to give me an idea of whether or not I'm going to like the book.

Ultimately, everyone's opinions differ and everyone's tastes are different. It's because of this that we need negative reviews as much as we need the glowing ones. So next time you find yourself having to write a negative review, don't apologise! Your opinion is valid, and I want to hear what you have to say.

When Does Defensive Become Pushy?

We all have our favourite books and our favourite characters, those stories and the people in them that we'd go to the ends of the earth to defend. But when does defensive become pushy?

Sometimes it can be hard to sit back while another person talks about how much they dislike the stories that we adore, or how much the characters we hold dear grate on their nerves, but do we always need to jump to the defence of the stories we love?

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion - imagine how boring the book blogging world would be if everyone felt the same way about everything! - and if a fellow reader doesn't like something that we covet, often the best thing for us to do is to just accept it and move on, because ultimately it doesn't matter if another reader doesn't love the same things we love.

This isn't necessarily the case 100% of the time. Personally I think it's great to start a discussion (a friendly discussion!) with another reader if their dislike of something seems misinformed. For example, even though I no longer watch Game of Thrones I will always defend Sansa Stark when I stumble across someone who claims they don't like her because 'she's a stupid little girl and it's her fault everything goes wrong'. Ultimately if I were a twelve/thirteen/fourteen year old girl in Westeros, I'm sure I would have made exactly the same decisions that she did, and if you can watch a show like Game of Thrones that's full of rapists, murderers and bullies in every shape and form and the character you hate most is a teenage girl, you have problems my friend.

my sweet summer child

But if I saw someone say something along the lines of 'I don't like Hermione Granger because, despite being able to do magic, there are times when she's quite close-minded, such as her initial attitude towards Luna and her inability to understand that just because she wants to help the house elves that doesn't necessarily mean they want her help and she should respect that'. That's a well thought out argument, so why would I question it? If anything I love reading opinions like that because it gives me something to consider that I haven't thought of before, and that's what's so great about the book blogging community!

That's not to say that every opinion about a story or character we have needs to be backed up with evidence - the example I used is probably a rather extreme one - because ultimately you don't have to justify your opinions to anyone if you don't want to. Mira Grant's Feed is one of my favourite novels of all time, but opinion of it is very divided. I love it to pieces, but I don't feel the need to sing its praises and shove my love for it down the throat of someone who didn't like it. One of the criticisms I often see is that there's too much world-building within the narrative and it slows the story down - I think that's fair criticism! Personally I really enjoyed all that information, but I can understand why other people found it dull and felt as though they were wading through it to get to the action.

This post simply comes from a place of personal frustration. It happens to me more 'in real life' than in the book blogging world, but whenever I've mentioned my dislike for The Great Gatsby in the past, for example, it's as though every Gatsby lover within a 50 mile radius jumps out of the nearest crack in the pavement and talks at me about all the reasons why it's the most amazing, splendiforous book of all time. And I don't care.

It's the same with anything else in life. If I told someone I don't like carrot cake, I wouldn't expect them to go and buy a slice and then shove it down my throat until I loved it because that sure as hell wouldn't make me love it. You could buy me a slice of carrot cake and ask me if I wanted to try some and I might try some, but I also might not!

Is cake a bad metaphor?

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the people who say something along the lines of 'Oh it's a shame you don't like The Great Gatsby; it's one of my favourites', it's the people who look at me like I just told them I tied a piranha to my shoe and kicked Santa in the face that are the problem.

Sometimes I see people putting little disclaimers at the top of blog posts apologising in advance that they're going to be talking about how they didn't like a particular book or a particular character, and I hate that. Why do we have to apologise for the way we feel? More importantly, what could have warranted that apology other than a past experience in which a fellow reader has been very vocal about how shocked and appalled they are by our opinion?

Of course there are the cases in which another reader may be more informed than we are. For example, if I were to read a book in which a character had an abortion and, for the sake of this argument, I thought their decision had been wrong, I think it's perfectly fair for another reader who may have had an abortion to pipe up and tell me I was out of order because everyone's body is their own, and unless you are in a situation like that you can't possibly decide what's right and what's wrong.

One of the things I love most about the book blogging community is discussing the books I love (and the books I don't!) with fellow book lovers, and I whole-heartedly believe that book bloggers are some of the friendliest bloggers on the internet. We all have the right to defend the stories we love and we all have the right to talk about what we didn't like, but sometimes we also need to take a step back before we jump in with our defence and respect each other's opinions. Think how boring blogging would be if we all felt the same!

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Don't Judge a Book by its Author

Prepare yourself for a little rant: this is something I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while.

We all have our favourite authors. These are those rare breeds of writers whose books we'll always buy regardless of what they're about because we're certain it's going to be amazing, but of course that isn't always the case. I have a few favourite authors myself - I'd like to read as much of Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire's work as possible and I love a lot of Neil Gaiman's stuff - but for the most part I've never been the kind of reader who will blindly buy something purely because it has that author's name attached to it.

Some readers will buy something without really knowing what it's about, only knowing that they like that author, and that's fine! In many ways I admire their dedication to show their love and respect and admiration for the author of their choice, but what irritates me are the reviews that come afterwards.

Not 'Harry Potter and the Casual Vacancy'

The best example I can think of is the response J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy received upon its release. I haven't read The Casual Vacancy because the premise doesn't really interest me, and it definitely didn't interest me upon its initial release. I will get around to it at some point now because I have a copy which my parents picked up for me when I was ill, knowing how fond I am of J.K. Rowling, but it's not my priority.

I saw a LOT of Harry Potter fans immediately buying this book, and then being somehow surprised that The Casual Vacancy was nothing like Harry Potter. Because of course it wasn't, and Rowling never said it would be.

The Casual Vacancy has ended up getting some pretty shoddy ratings that, to me, seem completely unfair because they're ratings given by people who didn't really seem to acknowledge what the book was about. All that seemed to matter was that it had Rowling's name attached to it.

I'm sure I'm generalising a lot here; there are plenty of people who didn't buy The Casual Vacancy, and then there are plenty of people who bought it because the premise did interest them and it was a story they wanted to read. This is something I've seen happen a few times, however, and it's always grated on my nerves.

If you love an author, that's great, but if you read all of their books expecting them to be just like one book/series then you're always going to set yourself up for disappointment, and you're probably hindering the author more than helping them with a negative review.

What are your thoughts?

Should Our Books Have Trigger Warnings?

Get ready, guys. This is a long one.

Last year there was a lot of talk about the inclusion of trigger warnings in books. There were people who agreed with them, people who didn't, and people who didn't really give a hoot either way. I meant to write this post last year, and just didn't. I guess I wanted a little more time to mull over what I thought before I wrote a discussion post like this.

Now the first thing I will say is that my views aren't meant to offend or insult anyone, though I hope they won't, and I'll also say that I'm very lucky in that I've never needed trigger warnings. There are certain things I don't like to read or watch, but thankfully I've never experienced any traumatic or upsetting event that has made me require trigger warnings. I just wanted to get that out there because there's a good chance that people who do need trigger warnings may have very different views on this topic to me.

Last year I completed an MA in Creative Writing. This was a year in which I got to dedicate my time to a creative project in the form of a 30,000 word portfolio as well as a 5,000 word reflective essay to accompany the creative work. Including me there were ten people on my course, and it was nice to have such a small number of us; everyone was working on something completely different, and we had two seminars a week in which we read extracts from each other's work and offered constructive criticism.

Very early on in the MA, we all agreed we would include trigger warnings at the beginning of our submissions, in fact it was requested by a couple of my fellow students. Sometimes trigger warnings are necessary; they were certainly necessary for one of the students on my course, who frankly wrote some pretty horrific stuff. Immediately there was a debate as to whether or not they were needed, and not surprisingly the one student whose work was most in need of trigger warnings was the one student who disagreed with them most vehemently. The rest of us were happy to include them - ultimately, it was no skin off our nose.

In truth practically none of us - aside from one student - wrote particularly graphic, violent scenes, but trigger warnings aren't only used for violence. Some students found it difficult to read about mental or sexual abuse, sometimes because, like me, they just didn't like reading about it, and sometimes because they had unfortunately experienced it themselves. Others, such as a good friend of mine, found it very difficult to read about any form of violence towards animals.

But where do we draw the line between a trigger and something that people just don't want to read?

There are some books which have trigger warnings already. The first one that springs to mind is Danielle Vega's The Merciless. I haven't actually read this book, but I do know there is a warning at the beginning because it includes graphic scenes of torture. 

Pretty cover, though.

Some people are squeamish, there's no shame in that, and a trigger warning like this is very useful, particularly when the cover of The Merciless is so simple and, in some ways, rather misleading as to its contents. The trigger warning's also great for people for whom torture is a trigger; some people find it very, very upsetting to read about other people being tortured, or to watch it for that matter - I know a few people who will never go near the SAW movies for that very reason.

I guess what I'm saying is trigger warnings are good for people who need them, but what about the people who don't? Trigger warnings for them are unnecessary, they may even be considered a spoiler. What if a book includes a trigger warning that manages to ruin an upcoming scene in the book? And how much of a book needs to be considered a trigger to warrant a trigger warning? Would one little scene justify putting a warning right at the front of a book? What if that put a reader off reading it when, in reality, the majority of the book is perfectly safe for them to read, and the triggering scene may be so minute they may not even find it triggering? Could the warning itself, then, actually make the trigger worse than it is by making the reader feel as though they're building up to something awful?

Who decides what counts as a trigger? People who have triggers themselves, or the people that don't?

Most importantly, as someone who doesn't require trigger warnings, is my opinion even valid? After all, I have no right, nor does anyone who doesn't have triggers, to criticise another person for theirs.

I don't mind trigger warnings in books for those who need them. Perhaps the ideal solution is to print two versions of each book, one with triggers and one without, but as someone who works in publishing I know how costly and tricky that would be for most publishing houses. I do think there are some real benefits to including trigger warnings, however, that even go beyond the simple reason of protecting readers with triggers. The main advantage I can see is that trigger warnings might help some readers who want to explore a certain topic more.

For example, if someone wanted to read more about characters who experience eating disorders or substance abuse or self-harm they'd be easier to find, and those readers would find it much easier to broaden their knowledge on a certain topic or even come to terms with their own struggles. Books, after all, are wonderful healers.

Having said that, I can't help but find trigger warnings a little concerning. I'm not one of those people who thinks someone with a trigger should 'just get over it', and I think people who do have that point of view need to go and give themselves a long, hard look in the mirror.

 As someone with friends who have triggers I would never want to do anything that made them feel as though they were 'just being dramatic'; there's a reason I have friends who are triggered by violence towards animals and sexual abuse and terminal illness, and I never want to make them feel unsafe.

No, my worries are fairly simple. Where does it end? 

As a feminist I'm constantly met with 'not all men' whenever I'm debating something or fighting for what I believe to be right, because for some reason some men find their gender being accused of misogyny more infuriating than the fact that all women, at some point, have been made to feel unsafe, belittled or downright pissed off by a man. My worries with trigger warnings would be whether or not there would be some sort of backlash.

Would racists and homophobes request trigger warnings to warn them that the book they're holding in their hands includes POC or LGBT+ characters? I'd like to think publishers would never agree to that - in fact I'm sure they wouldn't - but these people have a way of ruining a good thing for everyone else, and if they couldn't have trigger warnings then perhaps nobody could and we're back to square one.

My other, perhaps even bigger concern, is for the younger readers with strict parents. I was very, very lucky growing up in that my parents let me read whatever I wanted; whenever they asked me what I was reading it was because they were curious, not because they wanted to know if it was appropriate. My parents trusted me to read what I felt ready to read, and they trusted me to put a book down if I was finding it uncomfortable. When I was very young they always read to me, so if anything did frighten me, which I don't think it ever really did back then (it's hard to get frightened by Biff and Chip), they'd be there for me to talk to about it.

This was one of the best gifts my parents could have given me. Not only was their trust liberating - I could read anything I wanted, so I got to explore so many stories from a young age - but it meant that I got to discover for myself what I found uncomfortable, and think about why that was.

I've known people who, as children, were only allowed to read what their parents approved for them first. Time and time again I've heard stories of children who desperately wanted to read Harry Potter but weren't allowed to because their parents and grandparents believed it was anti-Christian. When parents do this to their children they don't let them decide what scares them or upsets them, and all that creates is blind hatred, ignorance and bigotry. When my parents let me read whatever I wanted it meant I got to explore race, gender and sexuality during my early teens, and it made me a much more socially aware person.

I'm not saying parents shouldn't be involved in their children's reading - for heaven's sake read with your children, they love that! - but creatively strict parents have a lot to answer for, and I can't think of anything worse than one of those parents with a trigger warning. Their children would never be able to read again.

Should our books really be censored? Literature is one of the ultimate artistic modes of freedom - you have to be a certain age to see a film, but your age doesn't matter when you crack open a book - and each year we even celebrate Banned Books Week. There's a big difference between banning a book and adding a trigger warning, of course, but would adding trigger warnings somehow lead on to banning certain books altogether?

Ultimately I've given myself about a year to think about this topic and I still don't have a straight answer, and I don't think I ever will. As with most things I can see the pros and cons of including trigger warnings in the books I read, though as someone who doesn't need them I'm still not entirely sure if my thoughts on the matter are even valid.

What do you think?