#I have a very mixed opinion on booktok and bookstagram

[brainmuncher]

I'm not going to shame anyone for how they consume media, but this reminds me of some things I think about often.

I completely agree if this is about when some writing has those huge paragraphs with no breaks. In my typography class, we were given multiple reasons why those can be hard to read and encourage someone to pay less attention to the text.

Intimidation

Seeing a huge block of text can be seriously intimidating. When you see a giant block it is easier to see it as a lot of words to read and instinctively want to skim over it instead of actually reading it. When you space out the words it tricks the brain into thinking that it has fewer words than there really are.

Not only that, but you can use those breaks to highlight a point that you want the reader to pay attention to.

Breaking up the text will make the reader feel less overwhelmed by words and encourage them to read over the whole text. For instance, imagine you have two plates in front of you. One has a foot-long sandwich on it and the other has six finger sandwiches on it. Which one do you think would be easier to eat the whole plate?

2. Hard to find information and retain it

Without breaks in a text, it can be hard to find and retain the information within it. If you're making a giant text block sandwich describing the main character, then describing the surroundings, and then lastly what they're doing, there is a good chance that they will mostly only remember the beginning part.

After that, it can become easy for the reader to go on and realize that there is something integral that they missed and have to reread it over and over. Rereading a text multiple times like this can not only aggravate the reader but also exhaust them.

At that point, they will be taking in even less of the information fed to them and be less connected to the work.

I find that trying to limit how many different points you make within a single paragraph can make it easier to find the information later. If there are too many within one paragraph then it can become muddy and hard to find the information you need.

3. Exhaustion

It can be physically and mentally taxing to read giant blocks of text. Without any breaks, it can strain your eyes to figure out where you are on the page. Not to mention that it is harder to not mix up sentences and words within it. It's not accessible to all readers and will alienate disabled readers.

My professor was always very serious about accessibility in our work. If it isn't available for everyone then it will bring the quality of the product down. Blocks of text are hard for even an abled person to read, never mind someone with dyslexia, vision problems, or any other number of things that can make reading harder.

Making something hard to read will only exhaust the reader. Mental exhaustion is a killer in reading. I'll be talking about it more below.

The other way that I took this and the comments attached is that they don't like to sit and read for long periods and skip or skim over the text to finish it faster.

If you find that you do this for reading then there is a good chance that you either

A) Don't like to read as much as you think you do if this is a common occurrence. (I'd recommend trying an audiobook version if you still want to read the book.)

B) Are reading a book that is at a higher reading level than you.

C) Aren't interested in that book.

D) Are mentally exhausted.

Both B and D are signs that you need a break from reading. Whenever I catch myself starting to skim over my book instead of reading it, I take a break and do something else. When I come back to it later, I'm usually in a better space to read the paragraphs fully instead of skimming.

You don't need to push yourself into reading if you aren't feeling up to it. If you have to read it for school or something, try to take breaks whenever you can! It can seriously help you keep away from burning yourself out.

The best way to hate a book is by forcing yourself to read it. I'm so serious about this.

Forcing yourself through the exhaustion to keep on reading something can not only burn you out but also disconnect you from what you are reading. Reading a book when you are in the right headspace for it compared to when you force yourself through it is an entirely different experience.

Remember to take breaks and also break your paragraphs.

Do they know that reading is not mandatory? Nobody is forcing them to read?

[cyanide-latte]

Hmmmmm thoughts on books you think are overrated/get too much undeserved attention? Like something that's super popular and you just don't get why? 🤔

Oh ho ho, Lottie always here with the big questions to make me think!

You know, I sometimes find myself wondering if social media platforms where the bookish community is active and thriving doesn't result in some kind of echo chamber that contributes to why some books of modeling and mediocre quality get so popular and overhyped? BookTube, much as I enjoy watching some content creators, does this, and I'm sure the same is true for Bookstagram, BookTok, etc. Publishing companies and booksellers notice content creators with a large viewership, so they offer sponsorships and free gifts in exchange for the creator pushing something that sponsor wants pushed. Which then eventually results in an echo chamber of many, many people hyping up something that really isn't all that amazing, no matter how popular it is. I strongly think that's part of it.

But then there are books where I see they're extremely popular and genuinely scratch my head over it. I almost thought I wouldn't be able to think of an example for this but almost immediately one popped into my head and I'll probably get shit for my unpopular opinion, but...

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.

Now, here's why I know my opinion is unpopular. I enjoyed her original Grisha trilogy when I read it. I've got mixed feelings about several aspects of it, but I enjoyed the story. Most people find it boring or too trope-y or "standard/generic YA fantasy", whatever the blessed fuck that means. But I've not seen a single damn person do anything but praise her Six of Crows duology.

So, I've not yet started the second book in the duology, Crooked Kingdom, though it's on my backlist TBR to read for 2022. But I read Six of Crows dubiously because it was so hyped. Because WOW it's a heist book and that's never been done before and WOW the main cast checks off the hot keyword diversity boxes and WOW even though it's YA you won't think it's YA because it feels so *~Adult~* and not trashy it's practically more like New Adult fiction instead of YA, and WOW WOW WOW!

.........

I read the book. I liked the characters. And there were elements of the plot that were interesting. But the pacing. Dear God, the pacing. 2/3rds of that book is just flashbacks giving us characters' backgrounds, and it's interspersed in a somewhat haphazard way throughout the main "presently-occurring" plotline. It was disruptive, and realizing that the actual plot of the book barely filled a third of its near 700-some page count made me question a lot of things about what Bardugo was doing. What was she being told to do by her editors? Why didn't she make a series of novella prequels for the backstories and then the rest of the book? Heck, could've put that all in the book still without disrupting the narrative flow. OR, given how little of the book was "present time", could have made one book all the backstories, then made Crooked Kingdom somewhat longer than it is to contain the whole thing. Especially considering the way Six of Crows ends on a cliffhanger to set up almost the entire plot for the sequel, when they only barely accomplished the initial heist plot very quickly if you cut out the flashbacks and condense that "present time" together. Could have been done very differently and much better from a structural perspective.

But that wasn't what happened and it made me question why the book was written the way it was, and why so many people (especially people I'd watched long enough to know they normally wouldn't be able to stay engaged with such a writing technique,) think it's amazing. Is it solely because it hits diversity checkboxes? Is it because the idea of a heist plot in a fantasy setting seemed very new and shiny? (I'm pretty sure that's actually been done before. Maybe not in a book targeted at a YA demographic but I'm fairly sure I've seen it done before.) Is it just that SoC is a Hi-Lo book [re: High-interest, Low-vocabulary; entertaining and 'easy' to read, without being inherently childish]? I don't know. I may never know. But I don't get why it (and many other books out there) are so overrated and overhyped and adored when they're more mediocre than most people will admit.