From The New York Times:
Here’s a reading challenge: Pick up a book you’re pretty sure you won’t like — the style is wrong, the taste not your own, the author bio unappealing. You might even take it one step further. Pick up a book you think you will hate, of a genre you’ve dismissed since high school, written by an author you’re inclined to avoid. Now read it to the last bitter page.
Sound like hell? You’re off to a good start.
This is not about reading a book you know is bad, a pleasure in its own right, like an exceptionally dashing villain. It’s about finding a book that affronts you, and staring it down to the last word.
At a time when people are siloed into narrow sources of information according to their particular tinted worldview — those they follow on Twitter, the evening shoutfest they choose, AM talk radio or NPR — it’s no surprise most of us also read books we’re inclined to favor. Reading is a pleasure and a time-consuming one. Why bother reading something you dislike?
But reading what you hate helps you refine what it is you value, whether it’s a style, a story line or an argument. Because books are long-form, they require more of the writer and the reader than a talk show or Facebook link. You can finish watching a movie in two hours and forget about it; not so a novel. Sticking it out for 300 pages means immersing yourself in another person’s world and discovering how it feels. That’s part of what makes books you despise so hard to dismiss. Rather than toss the book aside, turn to the next page and wrestle with its ideas. What about them makes you so uncomfortable?
. . . .
I’ve hated my way through many books, thinking, I will read you no matter how hard you make it. But as I go on, I often find that loathing is mixed with other emotions — fear, perverse attraction, even complicated strains of sympathy. This is, in part, what makes negative book reviews so compelling.
One of the most scathing reviews I’ve ever written was for this newspaper as a freelancer. The book I’d been assigned was a parenting book. I wanted to like the book. I agreed with much of the book. But the authors were too credulous of certain research, and in ways that served their thesis. As I put it in the review, the authors’ “penchant for describing psychological studies and research projects as if they were chemistry experiments, with phrases like ‘the test of scientific analysis’ and ‘the science of peer relations,’ conjure up the image of Thomas Dolby repeatedly exhorting ‘Science!’ ”
It came across as manipulative, and I felt betrayed both personally (I had written a parenting book and bristled at seeing the genre compromised) and on behalf of readers who might not have the background to parse the data. New parents are a susceptible lot — I know because I used to be one.
Link to the rest at The New York Times and thanks to Dave for the tip.
I have hated many a book for many a reason. Some I have finished, in a perverse (and usually inaccurate) belief that somehow, in some way, the author will pull the book out of the crap heap they’re nosediving in to. Rarely happens. But I seem to hold on to that hope. And I have analyzed why I hated them so much and made sure not to make similar mistakes in my own writing. But these are books in genres I enjoy, sometimes even by authors I already like.
There are genres I do not like and so I do not read them. This includes, among other things, Westerns and romantic suspense. I don’t believe it improves my writing by wasting time reading stuff I don’t enjoy.
If anything, it’s been a very, very long time since a book has made me turn my writer brain off. When I can find a book I love so much that the world ceases to exist and all I care about is that story — that’s how I want to spend my free time. I feel like I’m continually looking for another one of those books.
I find my initial irritation at the author’s prescription tempered by the empathy I feel, for the poor dear, bless their heart, forced to read books they hate. Then I think, “Nah, its a job, they could do something else instead of bitching about their poor sad life and trying to drag us down…”
So my response to the author is two-fold.
1) Nope, don’t HAVE to read anything, got a life…
2) Here’s a straw, suck it up. Your dissatisfaction is not my problem.
I don’t always finish books that I like….
I have often stopped reading books I don’t like, after uttering the Eight Deadly Words (“I don’t care what happens to these people”). I have even uttered the words while flinging the offending publication at the wall…
Rant warning: I’m wearing my ex-teacher’s hat…
We’re all writers here on tpv, and we all came through much the same school system in which we were forced to read ‘good’ books for our edification. Through some quirk of fate or DNA, most of us ‘got it’ and continued to read for pleasure. But we should never forget that we are part of an exceedingly tiny percent of the human population that loves reading /despite/ those ‘good books’.
What of those who came through the school system with an aversion to reading? Or those multitudes that think they should read but have to force themselves to open a book?
I’d far rather encourage people to read Marvel comics their entire lives than make them hate reading. So long as they read /something/ for pleasure, there’s the chance that one day, they may be persuaded to read a book that’s a tiny bit outside their comfort zone. If that book isn’t too hateful, they may progress to a book that’s a little more adventurous still.
The operative word, though, is ‘persuade’ not bludgeon. While the door to reading remains open, growth is possible. Close that door and nothing is possible.
End rant. Thank you. 🙁
Yup. I always start kids with comics. I ask if they read, they say no. I will eventually find out what they like and find a comic. Romance comics. Adventure. All different kinds.
Some I will point to fan fiction.
That is fantastic! And do you find that they do progress eventually?
We have a simple strategy with our kids. Bedtime is 8:30, but they can stay up as late as they want (in bed) as long as they are reading. This works.
That is downright ELEGANT in its fiendish simplicity. Kudos, sir.
I agree. 🙂
Here’s a culinary challenge: Go to a restaurant, and order food you hate. What makes you gag? Order it, and clean the plate.
Feel special now?
Only if I heave before I can make it to the door, then I feel very special. 😉
I suppose I’ll be the lone voice of dissent and say that it’s the books that I disliked that taught me the most, looking back, and some of them continue to be major influences on me now.
Do I think you should constantly expose yourself to stuff you dislike? Of course not. But there is a value in stepping outside your comfort zone.
Eh, to me reading books you don’t like is something that happens by chance. I don’t set out to do it; life is too short for that. But there are some books I read expecting to enjoy, found out I hated, and then analyzed from every angle to understand why the book sucked so bad. Gormenghast is a how-not-to-write; it commits a myriad of sins I have learned to avoid, like writing pages and pages and pages of descriptions.
I just recently read a vintage novel that I consider a case study in why you shouldn’t trap the reader in the POV of a painfully simple character. Pro tip: if you don’t want a character to seem slow, do not have him repeat every question someone asks him. My goodness, how annoying that was! On the other hand, now I know how to create such a character on purpose.
But I honestly would rather read books where the author is teaching me what-to-do or how-to-do.
I’m with you, M.C.A. I read books and articles I don’t expect to like frequently. Sometimes they are a tonic, other times just a drag, but mostly they widen my perspective, and I treasure that. I read TPV, both posts and comments, because I expect to find a range of ideas and opinions. My idea of hell is strangulation by shrinking perspective.
yeah… just not enough time. although when I do find myself reading a book that isn’t working for me, I do try to analyze what didn’t work (as I set the book aside). But to do it on purpose? life is way too short.
And just why should I do that? More snooty advice from the self-aggrandized Lit-Ra-Chur Nazis. Pass.
You should do it because otherwise, the Literature Business would have to put out good books to part your from your money. And we can’t expect them to do that.
(Signed)
H. Smiggy McStudge
There are at least two ways to hate a book: you disagree with the opinion, the style (argument, grammar, whatever) is inept. The first is valuable to read. The second is a waste of time.
That’s what I was about to say. I read books on topics that I find distasteful (the Holocaust, Holodomor, Great Leap Forward, Stalin, Karl Marx’s books, Ivan the Terrible, James Buchanan, certain other historical events and actors) because I need to know about them in order to teach effectively and to understand where ideas that awful come from. But if I pick up a book, can’t get through the second, or third page because of the grammar, inept style, cardboard characters, overuse of modern slang because the author is trying to be “hip” and “popular,” I’m not squandering time and brain cells on it.
It did seem the author meant the first but conflated the two.
There used to be a similar belief about medicine, which was that any ‘real’ cure had to either hurt or be particularly distasteful, and the more it was, the more effective it was.
lol – yes! So puritanical. 🙂
Life is too short.
too much time on the person’s hands who wrote this.
really? spend precious moments of life reading the equiv of food you hate, that has no nutritious value, because some fellow in the far away thinks it a good idea for hisself. Really. No. HN
For awhile I tried to read other things outside my genre. Stuff I knew I wouldn’t like. To expand my mind. I basically stopped reading without realizing it. It’d been like 2 weeks since I sat down with a book.
Don’t do this to yourself!
You’ve just pointed out why so many people /don’t/ read, or have to be shamed/coaxed to read ‘something good’ via a book club.
There is reading for pleasure, and then there’s reading for information. Conflate the two and you end up with people who neither read nor expand their world view.
Such a bad idea. 🙁
Agree 100%.
Hmmm. “Why You Should Read Books You Hate”
Or, “Why You Should Read a newspaper You Hate”
See, they want more people to read their bad advice …
This is exactly the kind of advice I’ll never follow.
You know, I hate present tense, first or third (shudder). I’ve tried the tactic of forcing myself to read books written in it, until I realized that life is too short to waste it on something I know I don’t like.
I don’t like mushrooms, raw fish and Brussels sprouts, and I see no need to make myself eat something I won’t enjoy. I’m already limited enough in what I can eat, so why spend the precious few carbs and calories I can have on stuff I don’t like?
Now, that’s not to say that growing as a person is bad, that we shouldn’t try new things and expand our horizons. But most of us have been around long enough to know what’s worth it and what isn’t.
YMMV