A Blogger's Rant

You have to love people who make comments on your posts without ever having read the books. (Insert sarcasm here.)  They have decided, that just because it is a subject or author they love, that you have no right to your opinion.  They will make one snide comment in an attempt to what?  Embarrass you?  Deride you?  Make you rethink what you said?  I read a comment this morning on a review I recently wrote about a book - but they had not read the book; yet they felt qualified to inform me that my opinion was wrong.

If you are going to tell someone you don't agree with them, then don't YOU agree they should at least know the material?  You can't just arbitrarily tell someone they're an idiot without knowing what you're talking about, or you are the one who looks like an idiot.  I went on to explain the statement I made (it was actually some remarks the author had made against a race and religious denomination of people I thought others might find offensive, which, if this person had read the book, they would have  known - I merely stated that some might find the remarks offensive) and also to explain to them that this was my personal opinion, of which I had a right to.  Otherwise, why am I writing this blog?   Certainly it is to offer my reviews/opinions. 

Now, I am not saying that I don't welcome others' opinions; I do.  I welcome both positive and negative opinions.  However, like any writer (and even though I am not a novelist, of whom I have great respect, I am a blogger, which is also a writer) I don't appreciate being attacked personally because of something I wrote.  If you disagree, then state in writing why you disagree.  Don't make a negative comment on my review, (or others) about something I wrote without explaining your remarks.  You can't just tell someone their book is unbelievable, puerile, etc., or a reviewer that their comments are inane, ridiculous, etc. and think that it's not a personal attack.

I don't understand how someone can offer their opinion on reviews of a book if they have not read that book.  It is one thing to offer something of a nature such as "Thank you - I was/wasn't going to read the book, etc." and quite another to tell someone that they don't have the right to think the way you do regarding the content, considering they haven't even read the book.  They basically told me the statement was stupid, which I felt was a personal attack on me and, if any of you are honest, you would have felt the same way. 

So people, my point is this:  If you are going to offer a comment or opinion on a review, please either read the book first, or, if you are commenting on an article they are writing, explain yourself thoroughly.  Nothing upsets any writer more, regardless of what they write, than someone making a personal attack that is nothing more than an uninformed comment.

Happy reading and writing to you all.

 

Sticky Situations

How would you handle a situation that can only be referred to as 'sticky?'  By that I mean, someone who wants to do a good turn for someone else, but it winds up leaving you in the muck.  Here's what I'm talking about:

Often I receive requests to read books by others, and generally, they're really pretty good.  But now and again, you're going to see a self-published author that JUST CAN'T WRITE.  I regularly haunt the bookstores (as I'm sure many of you do), and I have a friend who works at one of them.  Recently a local author came into her shop and wanted to know if she could sell copies of his book, which he had priced at $5 each.  It sounds like a reasonable price, in the beginning.  The books weren't really books, but only novellas; stopping at around 80 or 90 pages each. 

Here's where the problem begins: she told him I have a blog, and she'd ask if I would read the books and review them for him.  Since I've done this many times before, it didn't seem like a problem.  So I took them both home, and the same night I called and let him know I had them and would get to them in a couple of weeks because I had other books I had to finish first.  A couple of days later he called and asked if I had a chance to read any of them, and I told him no, I hadn't been able to get to them yet.

And then I read them.  And wished I hadn't.  One was a police procedural that had way too many errors, beginning on the first few pages.  Example:  A body is found fully clothed, but the attending detective tells everyone to "round up all the sex offenders."  Why?  If the body was fully clothed, and you hadn't even brought it to the morgue to check for sexual activity, why would you haul in all the sexual offenders?...and it went downhill after that...with error after error after error, and just plain bad writing.

So now I'm in the position of having to notify this person and tell him he needs to rewrite most of the book because it's just plain awful; and having to ask my friend if she read the book before she passed it on to me (guaranteed she didn't).  Don't get me wrong; if I read a book and it's terrible, I have no problem putting that on my blog.  You can't change bad writing, bad plot, or bad ideas no matter how hard you try.  I just hate the idea of dashing someone's aspirations, especially since it was self-published and he paid to publish it.  I'm going to put it as nicely as I can, and hope for the best, but I don't know how nicely you can say, 'you can't write.'

I'd be interested to hear how others have handled this situation, if you've ever had it happen.  If not, I'd still like to hear from you.