Personal Taste

There's been a lot of talk in the blogosphere lately dealing with reading tastes. The meme is in the air. A few blogs I follow have had some really good posts on this topic. The ones that immediately come to mind are from agent Kristin Nelson and from Bookends Literary Agency:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2008/05/lesson-to-be-learned-from-popular-books.html

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2008/05/millions-of-readers-are-not-wrong.html

http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-do-bad-books-get-published.html

What these posts have in common is that there is no such thing as a bad popular book. A popular book is popular because people like it. If you don't like it, that's your taste. And writers panning popular books reek of sour grapes.

That is similar to what I said in my post about why I give bad reviews, and I feel somewhat vindicated. However, I also feel bad about the sheer number of bad reviews I've given. I still maintain that its my opinion, and that's what the blog is for, but I've resolved to do as Agent Kristin suggests and look for (and perhaps bring up in the review) what it is others like so much.

I like to think I haven't gone so far in my opinions that I question the sanity of the readership. Okay, so I did with The Golden Compass (I ammended my opinions in the reviews of the later books in His Dark Materials) and perhaps Crossover. I confess that some of my posts, especially the aforementioned and maybe some dealing with Dan Brown, were not precisely professional or even polite. I apologize for that and will try to do better in the future.

If at any point you think my opinion is too harsh, let me know. As you might be able to see, I'm not above dining on a steaming plate of crow.

I won't go back and remove my more pejorative reviews. There's too much revisionist history on the internet. So if you think I'm a prick, that's your opinion, but hopefully as I progress and grow into this whole blogging thing, my real personality will come out more.