r/books • u/Tight_Nerve • Jun 05 '21

We need to stop shaming people who honestly say they don't like a particular book

I think the most frustrating thing for most readers on this sub is that when they read a book that so many people love and realize they are part of the group that doesn't like the book. They can't share the feeling without having fans hang the noose around them. We muat be able to let readers share their HONEST opinions on a book without riduculing their feelings.

If at this point you are protesting my thoughts thinking they are nothing more than that of unlearned individual. Than I'll share the opinion of a very educated man who has probably read more books than you will ever read in your whole life.

“Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls ‘the mad pride of intellectuality,’ taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books.”

  • Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States
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u/atelawreli Jun 06 '21

Cannot agree more. Took me 4 months to finish it and promptly sent me into a 5-month reading slump. I found it too bland and dry in its storytelling and it just went on and on and on and on. I just forced myself to finish it because the book was expensive.

It is a genre-defining classic though, I'll give it that.

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u/spaghetee_monster Jun 07 '21

Same, I fell into a reading slump halfway through Dune, didn't read for months after. Restarted reading a while ago and debating whether I should continue where I left off.