how to choose books — a test
How to eliminate shit books
Wait why do we want to eliminate books? You ask. Aren’t all books good because they’re books? I mean yeah 50 shades isn’t good but isn’t Virginia Woolf good ?
Think again! I think in many respects it may be better to read 50 shades (you will see why) because it’s simply not as toxic
We wash our fruits before eating them so think of this technique I’m about to teach you as a cleansing technique for your reads
(you’d be surprised what is shit! It’s like the Bechdel test for books)
Step (1) search the authors name followed by the word “quotes GoodReads” and follow that link
(why GoodReads? Because the quotes are sorted by votes. So these are not just some random things but things that people like about the authors — a fair chance! There are wonderful things which can escape your GoodReads quote detection but here we are only looking for obvious bad signs so we can eliminate stuff. Don’t give up on a book just because the quotes seem meh since maybe the magic happens on a higher level of organization, but do throw that book away immediately if it has the following signs of rotting):
DEPRESSION:
- sentences that make depression seem like the only valid way to be (check Samuel Beckett for examples)
- saying they’re servants to sadness or how melancholy is their only true lover or something like that (note: saying they are sad is a different thing, being depressed is also ok, the problem is only when they act like depressed and sad is the only way a person is able to be OR like they want to encourage their depression to grow)
CYNICISM:
- blanket statements about how horrible everything is and how Horrible is the Only True Reality
- “life is so hard” stuff
FAKE DEEP:
- saying shit that sound deep only because it doesn’t make a lot of sense OR only makes sense half the time but the statement is a blanket statement (check Anne Carson)
- blanket statements about how something is or how everyone is but it is not even close to true and they’re not saying it to be funny — for ex “all men don’t know anything about creativity” or “what everyone really wants all the time is money”
- blanket statements about race “we Europeans” or “we orientals” that isn’t factually accurate like “we orientals understand what it is to love solitude” like what do you mean? Every Asian? Don’t waste our time with this
FAKE DEEP CLICHES:
- “and that’s the thing about …” (Kazuo Ishiguro)
- “because … because … because that’s the thing about …”
- “an-actually-nice-thing-like-love-or-friendship is terrible, I don’t wish it upon anyone” (Anne Carson)
COMPLAINING ABOUT SACRED THINGS:
- love
- friendship (it is one thing to be frustrated about not achieving real friendship, because real friendship can be hard to find, but another thing to hate on friendship itself—because the idea of friendship itself is a beautiful thing)
- men/women (usually it’s saying some mean thing about men actually bc writers try to be special but sometimes mean things are said about women too; just like categorical “all men are less gentle than woman” type things — Virginia Woolf)
- WRITING (when writers whine about writing I think they shouldn’t be writing)
Just talking about this annoys me lol
But this selection process is very important for filtering out shit
It’s better to read some cheesy romance than to read that shit
And you’d be surprised what isn’t shit. Like Lolita sounds sketch af but is wonderful
Then a personal pet peeve is just like, using too many anthropomorphic metaphors. Like “the sun reached out with its golden phalanges, pierced its sharp light through the clouds to force upon us the burden of sight” or whatever like acting like things have human intentions and anatomy (this is a double no no due to making something bad out of something inherently neutral or beneficial)
And magical thinking that isn’t fun or whimsical but that can lead to some self induced problems such as a statement like “and that’s the thing about phobias. Once you get rid of one another automatically replaces it with two times the potency”
Why are all of the above so damn common in literature? Because writing is turning into a contest about who’s more special and weird? So then going the opposite way would be the coolest thing then. Be positive.