Trashing Books I Hate

In response to someone complaining about Pollyanna type reviews--here is a not exactly quoted example, "I don't understand people who say they love every book they read. Have some balls and don't be afraid to give a book a negative review if you thought it sucked."

Here's the thing--I am not a book reviewer. Nor would I ever care to be.

I am a book recommender. If I've read a book, and I enjoyed it somewhere on the scale between "Liked It" and "The Aliens Can Take Me Now!!" I want to tell people about it--and I do.

I respect writers personal decisions about whether they choose to negatively review other writers' work or not, but it's not a choice I would make. There are many, often very popular, books I've read that damn near made me want to rip out my frontal lobe. Invariably, because people in my life know I read a ton, someone is going to talk to me about that very popular book and then proceed to gush at me about how much they "The Aliens Can Take Me Now!!" that book.

And while I likely glowered at that book so hard it burst into flames the minute I finished it, I have no wish to do that to someone I care about--or don't care about for that matter. I respect that others will like books I hate and realize people will probably hate books that I love. This is the magic of preference.

So, to sum up, you won't hear about the books I didn't like. You might hear that I read them which would be followed by a strange and eery silence. You will, however, see me do back-flips for the ones I thought were great.