Novels I Don't Like vs. Novels That Suck
The things you do to stay busy while waiting in your car for a COVID-19 test ….
In 2021, I read 138 novels. (And 24 nonfiction tomes.)
Of those 138, I reviewed 99 on Amazon and/or Goodreads. (Amazon rejected 11 of them, due to language of other “standards.” Goodreads, which is owned by Amazon, rejected zero.
Of the 39 novels I did not review, 11 were because I wanted to read them again to properly assess them. I’m still doing that.
Of the 28 others, I left them unreviewed for one reason: I so disliked them that I had a hard time seeing past my dislike to anything resembling a fair opinion about the novels’ quality. And I really do try to be fair about this, while acknowledging that when my objective and subjective experiences collide, I may not always possess the level of self-awareness I think I do. If I doubt that at all, I step away.
(But let’s be clear, as the politicians say: I do write negative reviews, sometimes blistering ones, and all I can say is that I show my work, or hope that the reader sees that I make a good-faith effort to do so. I always try to give a logical rationale for why a book objectively doesn’t work.
A year ago, in an effort to step up my critical game, I decided to interrogate the reasons why I find a given novel subjectively wanting. “It annoys me” is not a sufficient answer, even if the question is being posed only to the man in my mirror. So, each time I set aside a novel I disliked, I tried to drill down to a deeper level about the nature of my dislike.So I kept a log with a few brief thoughts about each.
Here are some of them:
”Too operatically emotional. Not even touch on a wrist or every sideways shift of an eyes should be seen as an epic betrayal.”
“Zero glide. I’m tired of having to backtrack to figure out what character did what and who’s where and what each person knows.”
“Too many clichés. A shoulder wound, an alcoholic detective, a sexy FBI profiler and a missing child? What next, a cop pal who will run license plates for you?”
“Too soggy with backstory. When is this fucking story going to actually begin?”
“Too much unearned sympathy for the lead character. The story hasn’t even started and we’ve already heard about her murdered sister, her abusive mother, her enabling father, her sexually coercive boss and her cheating boyfriend.”
“The characters never step away from the structure. They’re contrivances bent to the plot. Let them act according to their own established logic.”
“Stop using your POV characters to judge other characters before they’ve had a chance to offer themselves up to the reader’s judgment through their actual actions and dialogue.”
“Stop telling me things like: "‘She stepped inside and knew something was wrong.’ Let the reader work that out for themselves. How about ‘She stepped inside and her eye caught on the shaft of light from the open refrigerator.’”
”Sex on the page isn’t sexy; what’s sexy is the power dynamics and opposing agendas each character brings to the fact. Insert Tan A into Slot B sex is fucking tedious.”
For what that’s worth.
If any of that makes me seem like an asshole, comfort yourself with the knowledge that I never attached an author’s name to my opinions of their work. And that a very uncomfortable nasal swabbing is in my near future.