Bookish Thoughts – Page 15

We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is: unpopular bookish opinions (submitted by Kaitlin Galvan @ Somehow I Manage Blog).

I feel like this prompt is pretty open to interpretation–either I can talk about unpopular thoughts I have about certain bookish things, or I can talk about unpopular opinions I have about certain books. To be honest, I find both ways difficult to answer because, for the most part, I do agree with the majority of the bookish community! So I thought why not do a half-and-half? I’ll mention the five books I have unpopular opinions about, as well as five unpopular bookish opinions I have.

Unpopular Book Opinions

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Y’all, I could cry for how much I ended up disliking this book. It made me so sad because everything about it sounded like something that I would fall madly, deeply in book love with, but that wasn’t what happened. I was confused, hopelessly lost and didn’t connect with any part of this. I struggled a lot with the magical realism in this book, and I’m pretty sure it’s why I’m not a fan of this much magical realism in books. It was a lot.

The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m sorry Tolkien fans, I did not enjoy this book at all. Maybe the problem is that I watched the movie before reading the book? Although tbh, I still think I would have struggled to get through it without watching the movie. I had high expectations but this really let me down. I found it so boring… My disappointment with this book is also the reason why I have yet to read The Lord of the Rings books.

The Magicians (The Magicians #1) by Lev Grossman. I found this book so boring. Everything about the blurb and the title and everything was so exciting to me, but when I picked it up I found it a slog to get through. Also, very melancholy (nothing wrong with that, I just didn’t feel it with this book).

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. A lot of people really enjoyed Rooney’s debut but I was definitely not one of them. I struggled to get through this one and I really wanted to DNF it, but of course, I didn’t. This book was highly depressing and the characters were so unlikable, and with such a character-driven book, this made it a big struggle for me. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed Normal People, but IMO the characters were much more relatable and likeable in it.

Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1) by Amanda Foody. I’ve heard a lot of people who read YA fantasy dislike this book because it reminded them too much of Six of Crows. Well, yes, it did a little bit but I really enjoyed a lot about this book. The characters, the world-building, the magic and mystery. It was a good book and I can’t wait to read the sequel King of Fools.

Unpopular Bookish Opinions

E-books are seriously the best. As much as I love having a physical book in my hands, the convenience of e-books is unmatched. I can carry thousands of books with me in one go, I can highlight my favourite passages and make notes without physically marring my books with highlighters/pens/pencils, and I can look them up with ease and upload them to my GR, easy as pie.

I don’t mind dog-eared pages…if I do it in my own books. Okay, I know this is highly hypocritical, but if it’s my book I’m okay with dog-earring its pages, but I absolutely hate it when people borrow my books and dog-ear the pages. I know it’s so weird, but I also make So most of the time I just tell people that I don’t like dog-earring pages so they don’t do it to the books they borrow from me!

I like to bend my book spines. Honestly though, how difficult is it to read a paperback and not bend the spine? When the spine doesn’t get bent I feel like I have to shove my face all in the novel just to read all the text! As much as I try not to bend them, it happens anyway, and the feeling of having a book open up all the way while reading is so satisfying. Yes, I’m a spine bender and I ain’t mad about it!

Graphic novels and audiobooks count as reading books (and so they count towards your GR reading goals). I don’t know if this is really a thing but I always see people ask whether audiobooks and graphic novels count as “reading”. I mean, yes? You tend to invest more time in audiobooks and even though graphic novels are shorter reads and thus you end up ‘reading more’, you’re still reading, right?

I like to watch shows or movies before reading the book and sometimes I even like it better than the book. One such example of this for me is Game of Thrones. I read four of the books but I don’t think I could re-read them and neither did I feel the need to continue reading them. Another one is also The Magicians TV show–I found the book so boring but the show? Super exciting, dark and creepy!

What are some of your unpopular book(ish) opinions? If you’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday post for today’s prompt, leave your link in the comments below! 🙂

Blog signature that reads: Let's Chat! xoxo, Dini

Earlier today, I read a post about reviewers written by Ally @Ally Writes Things and it had me reflecting on my own thoughts about the subject. I really enjoyed Ally’s discussion post from last week about different types of reviewers. In it, she identified seven types of reviewers, and I think I’m a mix between two: ‘The Friendly Reviewer’ and ‘Easy to Please’. It’s funny how accurate these descriptions are for the different reviewer types. Check out her post to see if you can identify what type of reviewer you are!

Friendly + Easy to please Reviewer:

Is easily distracted by good writing
Only notices major issues when they’re pointed out by other reviews
“I thought the plot was boring and the characters were just okay, but I loved the writing. Four and a half stars.”
Will drag your favourite book if they didn’t like it, but will do it nicely
Honestly, even when they hate a book, it will be worded in the nicest way possible
Will still probably rate that book 2 stars
If they love a book, it’s just 600 words of them gushing non-stop about everything

This post actually brought back to mind something that I’ve questioned myself about over the last few weeks, and maybe it speaks to my insecurities as a somewhat new reviewer and blogger with little to no literary background other than my passion and love for reading. But sometimes I question whether I can call myself a “book reviewer” because I feel like about 80% of the time I’m only reflecting on how the book made me feel and what it made me think. Of course I do talk about the writing style, structure, pacing etc., but I don’t know much about the literary terms that are used to ‘critique’ books, so I tend to focus on what I do know.

The reason I thought of this is because I read someone comment that they also do the same thing (talk about how a book made them think/feel), but because of that they don’t consider themselves a book reviewer. That really got me thinking: does this make me any less of a book reviewer? I’ve only “recently” (read: one year) started to write reviews and one of the reasons I got this blog was to work on how I read and reflect on books. Maybe I’m biased (lol) but I don’t think it does because when you’re writing a review for a book you just finished, some of the elements you consider are how you felt connected to the storyline and the characters, whether that be emotionally, mentally or otherwise. Right?

What are your thoughts on this? Am I just letting my insecure thoughts consume me or have you ever wondered the same? Also, what type of reviewer are you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!