Friday, March 22, 2013

Follow Friday - Winston Smith Was Sent to Room 101 to Be Tortured with His Greatest Fear


It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:
  1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
  2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - Shiloh Walker and Cherie Reads.
  3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
  4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
  5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
  6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
  7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
  8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!
And now for the Follow Friday Question: What is your guilty pleasure as far as reading? Is it a genre, or is it a certain type of book?

Crappy books. I don't mean any particular genre or any particular style of book. Every genre I have read has its share of good books, and yes, that even includes the romance genre. When I say crappy books I mean crappy books. I mean books that have ridiculously stupid plots, horribly cardboard characters with names like "Brick" or "Steel", and really awful writing. And it isn't a case of me picking up a book and not realizing it will be terrible before I read it and discovering that it is awful while reading it. Sometimes I just like reading a really putrid book.

I have a couple of theories that may explain why I enjoy these books. One possibility is tied to the fact that I review almost every book I read. When I am reading a lousy book, it is fun to map out in my head how I will write my review. In many ways, writing a review lambasting a really awful book makes reading the book worthwhile. Another possibility is that by reading really crappy books once in a while, it makes the other books I read seem that much better. reading junk places the better books into context and highlights their excellence. If one reads only the top range of books, then one runs the risk of having a skewed sense of scale where you consider books that are still among the best available to be quite poor, because you haven't read any truly poor books. That's kind of a weak reason, because I'm pretty sure I'd know what a poor book was like without reading them.

The real reason is almost certainly this: I just like crappy books sometimes. I know people who like to watch awful movies. I like to read lousy books. Not all the time, but once in a while, it is fun to take a really rancid book and read through its fetid pages.


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12 comments:

  1. LOL i love your answer to that question! I have a secret pleasure in watching really really really BAD movies, and then picking them to pieces. A bad movie is no fun if you don't have anyone to pick it to bits with. Heh.

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  2. Lol, such an interesting answer. I'm quite the opposite, but your reasoning actually makes sense, I love it haha.

    New follower via GFC.
    My FF

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  3. Wow, what an unusual answer! O.o

    I also like to read a kind of crappy book here and there, I think it makes the good books seem even better!

    New GFC follower
    Roxy @ Story Envy

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  4. Haha, that's so funny! I actually hate reading crappy books... They make me feel so frustrated. XD

    Followed you :)
    thereadingkitten.blogspot.nl

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  5. LOL that is such a blunt answer! Good for you :D

    New Linky follower!

    Here is my FF post!

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  6. @Jaki: I agree. I do like bad movies sometimes, and picking them apart is a lot of fun. I'd say that MST: 3000 is evidence of that.

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  7. @Amanda Reyes: Bad books certainly aren't for everyone.

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  8. @Roxanne Gillies: It really does make good books seem that much better after you've waded through a really rancid piece of trash, doesn't it?

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  9. @The Reading Kitten: That's where reviewing books comes into play. A crappy book is less frustrating when you know you can really lay into it when you write your review.

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  10. @Alyssa Susanna: I'm often blunt in my reviews as well.

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  11. I recently realized that what makes me enjoy great movies and terrible ones is, in part, the same thing - the sense of wonder you get from seeing something you've never seen before.

    For me, the basic sense of wonder is the same whether it's something sublime (like, oh, seeing the Hulk's confrontation with Loki or that big "one-shot" action sequence in The Avengers) or something utterly ridiculous (like, e.g., Eros explaining the dangers of Solaronite or the less-than-convincing Bela Lugosi double in Plan Nine from Outer Space).

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  12. @David C: I can see that. Bad books and movies do find so many varied and interesting ways to be awful, don't they?

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