ODD MAN OUT
There I am, eager, excited, practically rubbing my hands together in glee. Because there it is, right before my eyes, practically glowing with its own inner light. I have the book. You know the one I mean, the one that has everyone raving, which has been recommended to you by a battalion of different people and has more 5 star reviews than you can shake a stick at.
And then I finish the book. And that stick I’m – for some reason – shaking at those 5 star reviews? It’s very tempting to use it to bash the crap out of that battalion of people who recommended the book to me. As for the glow, turns out it was just because I have a Kindle Paperwhite. Because that book that everyone is raving about? Awful. Just awful… and that’s me being kind.
Is anyone else familiar with this experience? Find themselves wondering if you picked up the right book because surely this can’t be what has everyone’s knickers in a twist. This seems to happen to me a lot. I find myself reading a popular title and being either :
a) Underwhelmed – This is usually when a book (to me) is just average, and although okay I can’t understand why everyone is rhapsodising over it.
b) Bewildered – Seriously, did I read the same book as everyone else? How do a bunch of – normally – intelligent women like this shit?
c) Angry – This is normally when I can’t even reach the end as the characters/situation/writing annoys me that much.
As I said this happens to me a lot, whatever book has captured everyone’s imagination fails to hook it’s claws into me. Of course, sometimes it is the other way round and I love something that makes everyone else shake their head. As I am writing this, I can imagine the UTC gals nodding their heads, they know that sometimes I have…unusual taste in books. More specifically they know about my love affair with cheesy sci-fi. Give me a alien hero with the requisite blue skin and odd appendages and I am one happy lady. However, give me a broody, handsome, sex-on-a-stick hero and I am much harder to please. Go figure.
Perhaps I just have a contrary nature and I rarely jump on to the book band wagon and it isn’t because I have some deep seated need to be different or believe following convention is necessarily a bad thing. I think I’m just fussy and hard to please (unless you’re an alien) with very particular tastes. Unfortunately that often leaves me as the odd man out, often wondering if the world has gone a little mad. Or maybe it’s me who is a little mad…
I can’t be the only one though, how often do you find yourself being the odd man out?
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Annnnnd I will stop myself there, before I start waxing lyrical about my love of historical romance and fantasy as well; no one needs to know about my elf fantasies. As you can tell, I adore and day dream about most romance genres, and my three big loves are 1) reading about romance 2) writing about romance and 3) talking about romance with my gals. Which, is why I love Under the Covers so much, I get all my bookish needs satisfied and don’t get judged when I talk about my favourite characters like they are real people. Which they are right?
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This happens to me too. I am in a few FB book clubs and when everyone raves about a book I would immediately get it. I have slowed waaay down on this since most of them have been meh. If I get it for free I don’t mind. If I pay for it, depending on how much it was, I get a little mad.
Yeah, I am the same, I slow down a bit before diving in. I have learnt a little to check who is recommending it to me as well. I know if a certain person likes it, the chances are I won’t and if a certain other person does like it then I probably will to.
Suzanne
recently i have been very disappointed in a few books….normally, i read several reviews before buying but a few were my go-to authors that left me feeling like the odd man out :/
Oh no, hate it when that happens. But even the best authors have a few books you won’t like (or atleast not love as much as the others) sometimes that feels worse than a new author you have never read before as you have personal expectations rather than hype from other people if that makes sense.
Suzanne
Yeah, sometimes, it just feels like we didn’t read anything close to the same book… I’m pretty sure it happens to all of us 🙂
Lol! Well I am glad I am not alone! Sometimes when you don’t like a book that nearly everyone else is in love with it can feel pretty isolating (and baffling!)
Suzanne
Yes, definitely. I’ve had this happen on many occasions and it’s disappointing every time. I want to like it! I want to share in the excitement. And then I just…don’t. And I feel very left out!
Yes precisely, makes me double check just in case I accidentally read the wrong book lol
Suzanne
Oh….yea. Like when you struggle through the first Justin Cronin and finally finish it, only to get the galley fir the third/final one and find out its horror with zombies and vampires…..come on! Two pages in…TWO, and I returned it to the publisher…….
Lol I quite liked Justin Cronin’s first book – the spooky cover attracted me – but I still haven’t gotten round to reading the rest! I do like my zombies and vampires
Suzanne
This has happened to me, as well…I, too, puzzle who really has the ‘right’ of it! 😉
I would say it doesn’t happen that often but there are times when I go to post a review on Goodreads or Amazon and I catch someone else’s note that mystifies me. If I hated the book, I feel like “did I miss something” and if I love it, it’s more “how could you not love it.”
No matter how hard they try, an author won’t please everyone. Even fans won’t love every book.
That same “how could you not love it” thought often goes through my head when I read and love some thing no body else does. Then I realise it’s a weird book about a lizard alien man and remember not everyone has quite such wacky tastes as me sometimes lol
Suzanne
I have myself being the odd man out quite a bit
I’m very picky about an author’s writing style, so I often find myself scratching my head over books that everyone else has raved about. In fact, it just happened this month with a self-pubbed author that has gotten a lot of buzz. If it’s a new-to-me author, I’ll typically either get it from the library, or wait for a sale. Sometimes all I need to do is to read the sample to know that the book is not for me. In this case, I borrowed the book as my prime loan for the month and after reading it, I was… Read more »
Reading samples…that’s a brilliant idea! I never do that but it would definitely save me some heartache (and time) like you I can be picky – which I think is a good thing – and I know what I will like and what I won’t.
Prime loan, it’s a brilliant tool, I only wish you could use it more than once a month. The amount I spend on Amazon I think I deserve to rent out atleast a few more.
Suzanne
This happens to me with everything from books and music to movies and TV shows. I have learned not to buy into the hype too much and this helps with a phenomenon that I think contributes to our disappointment: expectations. I have found that when my expectations are high I am OFTEN disappointed. When they are low, I am often pleasantly surprised. Case in point: Tarzan. IMHO Hollywood has never made a good Tarzan movie and I am a huge fan of the mythology and the romance in the story. Apart from the animated version, I have left the theater… Read more »
That’ very true, I try to ignore hype now so that I am not -almost inevitably it seems- disappointed with something. I like to go into a book blind of expectations so I have no preconceived notions to sway me, atleast with a new author anyways! I loved Tarzan, admittedly my enjoyment of it had a lot to do with Alex Skarsgaard’s fabulous body, particularly that chest! But it was also a lot of fun, it didn’t really wow me (apart from the aforementioned chest) but I left the cinema without disappointment. I confess…I haven’t read any of your books,… Read more »
LOL, never ever ever feel like you have to read my books! If they ain’t your thang, they ain’t your thang. Too funny about the fact that everyone else loves them so you are nervous! I cracked up. But I just wanted to say, yeah, Alex’s chest. ZOMG. hehe
XOXOX!
It has happened to me more than once. Now I tend to look at Goodreads friends that have similar reviews of books I’ve read. Even then there is sometimes a mixed love/hate. What gets me is it bugs me so much and I keep thinking what did I miss when reading the book. I had one book I won from an author that was very friendly and communicative to me but then I read the book (or read as much as I could) and just hated it. I mean hated, hated it. Another more recent one I saw some liked… Read more »
I do the same, you start to know which people have similar tastes to your own and who doesn’t so you can gauge how well you will like the book. Although I find even then, there are a few surprises, good and bad. It keeps life interesting!
That’s a difficult situation when you personally like an author but don’t like their books, you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But honesty is always good, but maybe measured with a massive dose of diplomacy!
Suzanne
Oh, a LOT, and I’m actually fairly easy to entertain! I’m a huge PNR/UF fan, and there are a number of CRAZY-popular series that I simply cannot STAND. Whether there were tropes that quickly got to me, or the same stupid storyline over and over again, a distaste for the general public behavior of the author, or good literary gods help me, the most RIDICULOUS CHARACTER NAMES IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. But I very often feel I’m alone in that. I think I’ve met one or two other people that felt the same way I did –when I talk… Read more »
I am a super picky reader. A lot of VERY popular books (FSoG, Beautiful Disaster, Driven, Thoughtless etc.) didnt do it for me. I DNF’ed them all. I have been reading my whole life, I am a certified bookworm. I spent so many hours of my childhood at libraries reading. I have evolved as a reader, what I loved a couple of years ago, I bet I would HATE if I tried rereading them now. I started out strictly reading thrillers back in the day. Then I switched to UF and after that I discovered PNR, which was my first… Read more »
this happens to me only once in awhile , but not offen. the last time it happened was 50 shades of gray. dont get me wrong i LIKED BOOK 2 but one and three i could have done without. i remember reading review after review about how naughty it was and about the sex scences being so hot. they were good but when ive compared them to authors like J.R. WARD, LARA ADRAIN, LORI FOSTER, GENA SHOWALTER, KRESLEY COLE AND SO MANY OTHERS. i was like pretty let down!!!these ladies can write one hell of a sex scence !!! but… Read more »
This doesn’t happen to me as often as it used to. I used to just dive into a book but now I’ll check reviews from trusted reviewers and look for keys words like very angsty which = NO for me. I also find I’m harder to impress than I used to be when I had just started reading again.
So this doesn’t surprise me when it happens with the super big crazy popular books because those just don’t tend to usually be my thing. But it seems like this happens to me a lot with indie books. Like, it’s always the books that have all rave reviews, no one has given them 1 or 2 stars, maybe 2 people gave them 3 stars, but there’s a bunch of glowing 4 and 5 star reviews… but I can’t for the life of me understand what everyone else is reading. Especially when it’s poor writing, no character development, things don’t make… Read more »