Books you like but get a lot of criticism or hate

[billd91]

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. It's a superhero deconstruction. There's some really cringy parts with poor pacing, and more deux ex machina than I like - but I keep coming back to it.

I have a copy of that too. Well worth checking out.

 

[Deset Gled]

HP Lovecraft and Edgar Rice Burroughs take a lot of heat for their racial views these days, but since they're dead, I don't worry about reading and liking many of their works. You can't materially benefit if you can't take it with you.

For that matter, I still like the Harry Potter books - but then, we bought them long before Jo Rowling started saying transphobic stuff. We're not likely to send money her way now by buying anything more (even if we do agree with most of her philanthropy).

Came here to say that I was an HP Lovecraft fan before it was cool to hate him, and remain a fan. I enjoy the stories, I feel no shame in doing so. IMNSHO, you shouldn't feel like you can't enjoy Harry Potter because you disagree with some of JKR's tweets. It's okay to separate the art from the artist.

I used to read a lot of Stephen King. I occasionally got some surprisingly disparaging comments about it. A lot of "book people" seem to think of him as cheap pulp. I think the horror genre has gained more respect in the last decade, so this may no longer be the case.

A Wise Man's Fear (Kingkiller Book 2) by Patrick Rothfuss. ... I think a lot of the hate is understanding that all the digressions in the book make a satisfying book 3 nearly impossible, but I've resigned myself to that a long time ago.

There's going to be a third book?

 

[Haffrung]

One of the things I've realized is that critics have much less tolerance for cliches, because they watch hundreds of movies.

That twist you thought was original, they've seen in a bunch of older movies. That cliche you've seen once or twice and notice as a trope, they've seen ten times and are sick of. That cliche you've seen ten times and roll your eyes at, they've seen hundreds of times and it drives them up the wall.

So critics vastly overvalue originality compared to the general moviegoing population. Same is true for books, I'd imagine, particularly in genre fiction where the general public often wants more of the same.

Critics also have to be somewhat detached from the book or movie they’re reviewing so they can analyze it. Their job is to think deliberately about elements that most readers/viewers don’t think about at all.

If you look at this forum, you see the same thing with games; most of us who post here engage with RPGs analytically while your average gamer doesn’t. In other words, reviewers treat movies and books the way we treat games.

 

[dragoner]

I can't help but notice that the 'books you hate that everyone likes' and 'books you like that everyone hates' threads are both listing all of the same books. We're doing something wrong here.

Yes, except what to do about it? I also look at a lot of books and think I will never read them anyway. I also read a lot of pulp sci-fi like Andre Norton, which is summarily dismissed as nothing, it is good though, at least I think so. Classics, I re-read The Good Soldier Schweik or just Švejk, in Czech; this time the Selver edition, the 1st English translation, and it struck me as not very good, also seemed that it was translated from the German translation.

 

[Gradine]

The other thread has RPG books, so I might as well start it here.

I really like Hoard of the Dragon Queen. It's got plenty of flaws sure, some unavoidable, most not. But it's got such an interesting structure, it really plays like a D&D adventure smorgasbord. Of course, that's why people hate it; the first half or so is basically "hey, let's try out this type of adventure", so there are going to be parts everybody chafes at. But then it gives the players a pair of location-based chapters and says "you've got the tools, now go have fun". I tend to DM for newer players, so it worked out great for us

 

[Alzrius]

Critics also have to be somewhat detached from the book or movie they’re reviewing so they can analyze it. Their job is to think deliberately about elements that most readers/viewers don’t think about at all.

If you look at this forum, you see the same thing with games; most of us who post here engage with RPGs analytically while your average gamer doesn’t. In other words, reviewers treat movies and books the way we treat games.

I think the best example of the difference between what critics do and how the public perceives them is summarized by the following adage:

"People want critics to tell them what's good. Critics want to educate people about what 'good' is."

 

[Gradine]

I think the best example of the difference between what critics do and how the public perceives them is summarized by the following adage:

"People want critics to tell them what's good. Critics want to educate people about what 'good' is."

The best critics are able to weave the narrow path between the two; critiquing based both on popular trends and established filmmaking talents. I'm often reminded of Roger Ebert's fairly positive review of The Mummy (1999). His opening paragraph:
"There is within me an unslaked hunger for preposterous adventure movies. I resist the bad ones, but when a "Congo" or an "Anaconda" comes along, my heart leaps up and I cave in. "The Mummy" is a movie like that. There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased. There is a little immaturity stuck away in the crannies of even the most judicious of us, and we should treasure it."

 

[Ryujin]

Yesterday I asked what books that get a lot of rave reviews, but you just couldn't get into. Today it's the opposite. What books do you like, but every time they are brought up, the critics seem to come out in droves.

Top of the list for me are the Shannara Series. Every time someone brings up Terry Brooks, inevitably people will make it a point to call him a rip off of Tolkien. Was Sword of Shannara a rip off of LoTR? Yeah, but so was LoTR in regards to existing Anglo-saxon mythology or old English poems. In many cases, almost word for word with the serial numbers filed off (ahem, ring of Silviarus, Ents, etc). So I don't criticize Brooks too much for that. Secondly, that was just his first book. All of his other books were his own stories, and I'd argue better (Elfstones and the Walker Boh stories are the best, IMO).

Behind Brooks, are many of the D&D property novels from the 80s and 90s. They get a lot of criticism for just being garbage writing churned out to take advantage of the D&D IP. And yes, part of it is nostalgia, but I really enjoyed some of the books by Pauli Kidd, Rose Estes, etc.

These days I get criticized for enjoying the books of relatively unknown genre writers, who happen to also be personal friends. I've mentioned the books in the "What are you reading" thread. I used to get criticized for my annual reading of The Hobbit/LotR, even by fellow gamers, but that stopped when the movies came out.

As an aside, Kickstarter backers for "Destination: Fantastic", a web series starring Satine Phoenix and Stefan Pokorny, just got to see the premier episode. The went to Iceland and one of the things that they were able to do, was view a hundreds of years of copy old the prose Edda. Tolkien lifted the names of the dwarves and Gandalf, for The Hobbit, straight out of it.

Edited for "can't type"

 

[Zardnaar]

The best critics are able to weave the narrow path between the two; critiquing based both on popular trends and established filmmaking talents. I'm often reminded of Roger Ebert's fairly positive review of The Mummy (1999). His opening paragraph:
"There is within me an unslaked hunger for preposterous adventure movies. I resist the bad ones, but when a "Congo" or an "Anaconda" comes along, my heart leaps up and I cave in. "The Mummy" is a movie like that. There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased. There is a little immaturity stuck away in the crannies of even the most judicious of us, and we should treasure it."

The Mummy is dumb fun.

Popcorn movie 1999 it was great at the theatre. Great year for movies as well.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

1999 had a ton of great and/or impactful movies. The Matrix, Blair Witch Project, The Iron Giant, The Phantom Menace, The 13th Warrior, Mystery Men, Galaxy Quest, and many other non-genre works. Arguably, the shape of today's cinema started to be shaped then.

The Mummy is dumb fun.

Popcorn movie 1999 it was great at the theatre. Great year for movies as well.