Sharing is caring

Is this the future of reading? I recently read an article on Nytimes about a new company called SharedBook that lets readers add their own footnotes to books online. Comments really are pretty much everywhere these days (in newspaper articles, on review sites like Amazon.com, etc), to the point where a post/article almost seems naked without them. But do they work for books? I can imagine some books where they might work (SharedBook is testing the idea on a parenting book) but I think it be less suited to fiction.

For me, comments work when the writing is opinionated and argumentive (like a blog post on Nymag.com) but might not be as suited to the immersive act of reading a novel. For me, I have to treat the author as God to really get caught up in the story. I have to just accept that the main character is wearing a blue coat—if I stop to quibble over whether it should have been gray I’ll find myself losing track of the narrative.

Footnotes might be good for a second read though. You could read the book the first time around alone and then check out what other people said to say about the book during a second read.

Readers give EW’s “C” review of Catching Fire an “F”

Apparently, if you didn’t like Catching Fire, you didn’t read the book.

EW.com just posted a review of the high anticipated second Hunger Games novel. The reviewer had some negative things to say about the book (she gave it a C grade) and the readers of EW.com had some very negative things to say about the reviewer.

I haven’t read all of Catching Fire yet, so I’m going to hold off most of my judgment on the book itself, but I do think the fervor that readers respond to a non-rave review of the book is interesting. Most of the early reviews I read from bloggers were really positive but Jennifer Reese, Ew.com’s reviewer, has a decidedly different opinion: she says it’s “a story that's been stretched to gossamer thinness” with “none of the erotic energy that makes Twilight, for instance, so creepily alluring.”

The readers’ response to this lukewarm review? Not good. “Investigate this woman, please. Your reputation is in question,” reader Julie commands. Most people accused her of not reading the books she reviewed and (horror of all horrors) being a Twilight fan: “Ms. Reese, clearly you have no appreciation for a book with substance that gives teenage girls more to think about than sparkly vampire sex resulting in mutant babies” says MeMe.

So did Ms. Reese actually read the book? I am guessing some of the vitriolic comments come from her inaccurate description of the previous book: “In between romantic daydreams, Katniss shot strange beasts, dodged force fields, and battled murderous zombie werewolves — usually while wearing fabulous glitzy outfits.” Taken piece by piece, this is all wrong: Katniss didn’t really like Peeta but pretended to for the cameras, the werewolves were odd mutations created by the Capitol, not zombies, and she wore fabulous glitzy outfits, but not during the actual Games.

Still, I do think the reviewer read the book, and I’m guessing that most of the anger is simply because the review isn’t positive. It seems like there is this weird thing going on online right now with some series (Harry Potter, Twilight, etc) where it’s not okay to critique the series at all. Or where they are so mired in the series that they think everyone else knows absolutely every little detail about it. Or where they don’t think it’s okay to say they hate any books (you know, those blogs where like every review is positive).

I totally get the anger when someone who clearly has never read any YA or fantasy writes a review of a genre book that completely misses the point, but in this case (despite a few misconceptions) I don’t think the anger is justified. I’ve read enough of the book to agree the write raises some valid points and you can find evidence in the text for a romance-based reading of the series. So, Ew.com commenters, why not lay off all the complaining? It’s like those girls with the Twilight tattoos: you’re giving all the fans a bad name.

Would you feel odd buying a YA book for yourself?

When I read this sentence in a recent Wall Street Journal article, I wasn’t at all surprised: Let's be honest: Why do so many adults read Suzanne Collins's young-adult novel "The Hunger Games" instead of contemporary literary fiction? Because "The Hunger Games" doesn't bore them.

The second volume in the Hunger Games series is one of the top books on my “Must Read for Fall” list and it’s a long time since I’ve been in high school. But when it came out today, I felt a kind of strange reluctance to actually going out and buying a YA book for myself. If it was by an “adult” author, I feel like I would have definitely gone out and bought it, just like I go out and buy the latest Michael Connelly. But for some reason, I feel wasteful/embarrassed to buy a YA book on my own.

Part of the reason is that I know I will read it in a few hours. But do I buy books that I know I’ll read pretty quickly (see Michael Connelly, above) and I read the Hunger Games several times, so I am guessing the rereadablity factor on the second volume will be high as well.

I guess it’s just for me there is some odd shame factor that prevents me from buying a YA book that isn’t also a cultural event like Twilight or Harry Potter. People who get ARCs for free probably never worry about this feeling (or people who can justify reading the books b/c they have children or because it’s for work) but for me, buying a YA book for myself feels like being the oldest kid at camp.

So I guess I’ll just wait until my reserved copy comes in from the library.