Dislike vs Bad

Alright, yes, with a collection of pet peeves this large and varied, it’s been suggested I set them up somewhere as a private zoo (the phrase protecting the public from them probably came into it somewhere); but this one stands out because it really hits home and roars in my face a bit too regularly: people’s insistence that reviewers can't be objective. Reviews are never any more than what the reviewer likes / doesn’t like. There’s no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad in any more absolute or objective sense.

Drives me crazy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s true of a lot of them, and no question it’s a big element in my own reviews. But it’s not all that’s there; and I try to differentiate, often flagging things as a matter of taste just to make sure the readers stop and think if theirs matches mine, while providing a concrete basis for things that are about right or wrong in a more absolute sense.

There really is such a thing as bad writing on its own merits; it’s not always because I don’t like it. In fact some of the slushpile manuscripts I’ve read were so unimaginably bad as to be enjoyable in an unintentionally campy way for all the wrong reasons. Think hideous old low-budget SF flicks and the people who seek them out by preference over more finely crafted works of modern genius. It's the stupefyingly mediocre that's usually harder to get through than the actively bad. While I've eagerly recommended books and manuscripts that I didn’t like personally, because they just weren’t my sort of thing (e.g. psychological thrillers—about the last thing I want to do to unwind is to get in the head of a serial killer); but they were clearly excellent examples of their sort of story and deserving of help finding an audience because of that.

I’ve also heard the “yeah, but even if you say it’s bad and think you’re being objective about it, it may be someone else’s book of the year” argument that reviews are just opinion. All of which may be true, but it doesn’t make a bad book a good one; it simply means some people liked it regardless (see above about B-flick SF).

So what makes a book bad vs just being something I didn't like. Writing is a big factor. I don’t want or expect every book to have memorable prose that leaves you breathless and awestruck with its beauty or cleverness. I may enjoy that (think Peter Wimsey's "becoming drunk on words so often that he's rarely sober"), but it’s not inherently necessary for a good read. And honestly, sometimes I genuinely prefer less demanding mind candy. But prose filled with amateurisms like “let no word go unmodified syndrome” and never use a two syllable word when a ten syllable one will do, with technical mistakes that make it hard to understand or keep pulling you out of the story, with too many high flights that interrupt the flow and distract from the story itself—prose that gets in the way of the story, for whatever reason—that is bad writing. And it’s bad because it’s not doing its job, regardless of whether I like it.

Follow that reasoning right on down the line. Stories with a plot that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t resolve or is onion skin thin in a book that’s oversized leek thick to chew through are bad because they aren’t doing their job either. You may not care so much about plot and enjoy the book regardless, or it may be the type of story you like so you cut it extra slack, but it's still poor craftsmanship. Characters you can’t believe in, at least within the world of the story, aren’t doing their job. Caring about them gets closer to that borderline territory between taste and right / wrong—I have trouble enjoying a book without at least one character I care about and empathize with to some degree, but in a strongly plot-driven story whose characters need to adequately fit their roles more than be well rounded people, that’s not necessarily a matter of bad. Just not to my taste and something that could possibly have been done better.

Descriptions may be offered in exquisitely detailed prose, but if they still leave you with a muddy image rather than a clear picture in your head, they’re not doing their job. Other more minimalist descriptions, written in utilitarian prose that merely triggers your own imagination into filling the blanks—but filling them vividly and thoroughly—are not only doing their job, but doing it very well.

Yes, Virginia, there really are bad books. But there also are a lot of good ones. Take your reviews with a grain of judgment and look at why the thumbs up or thumbs down as much as which way the thumb is pointing when making your own decision. And realize that it's not always just a matter of opinion before you brush it off or swallow it whole.

Comments

[Robin Agnew]

Nice essay, Kim, and certainly true though I have just as hard a time reading the truly bad as the mediocre. The mediocre is more boring, the truly bad I guess is energizing just because it's so terrible. So maybe you ARE right...

[Kim Malo]

Thanks. Well you're more apt to get giggles and suspense over just how low it will sink with the truly bad. There's some of the same can't bear to look / gotta look element you get with other disasters. Deeply mediocre is nothing but a hopeless slog.