This Book Blogger Behaves Badly...Sometimes (and so should you)

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad, she was horrid.

This post has been nagging at me for awhile now, and it wasn't until yesterday that everything settled, and all my thoughts stopped moving just enough for me to grab on to the one that's been buzzing around inside of me for weeks. Oddly enough, this moment of clarity came after a retweet someone posted on twitter. I forget who retweeted it but the original author of the post was Trish at Hey Lady and it said:

"Reviewers are writing for the reader, not the author. NEVER LIE"

This post may not reflect the tone she intended when she wrote that tweet but it has really meant a lot to me today.

Every other day I see a post about book blogging etiquette, a post that tells me how I'm suppose to blog. This book blogger etiquette, basically boils down to a set of rules that polite book bloggers feel other book bloggers should subscribe to if they are to be seen as...polite. And as this book blogger is NOT polite, I'll tell you. It's really making my ass twitch.

This is my blog. I write it for me. These are my book thoughts- the thoughts that, I, Me, think about a book. I love that blogspot.com had a few megabytes left for me, Me, to have a little nook to write, collect and maybe even share my book thoughts. I can't tell you what an amazing feeling it has been to share my opinions with some of you, to connect with other people who love literature, deep down in their bones the way I do. I was raised on it, it's a part of me. It helps define who I am. I know non readers, and I truthfully don't know how they go through life without experiencing other stories and other places. I secretly think they're missing pieces of their soul and they'll never have them because they don't go looking for them- in books. I can't express adequately what reading means to me. We'll just have to move on from here.

That said- all that, I respect authors and their gifts.* I can't write a book. I don't have a story to tell. It won't ever happen and I don't want it to. I just want to be a part of the stories, not the one that creates them. Some stories are so beautiful- think about your favorite book and how you would feel, knowing what you know now, if it had never been written. It would be OK to cry then. I would hope you would.

But there are bad stories. There are bad books and oh there are bad writers. Not every bad story is a bad book. And not every bad book is written by a bad author. Even bad authors can write good books, just as good authors can sometimes write bad ones. Do you catch my drift?

I have every right to openly proclaim my love for an author's work.
I have every right to openly FLAME WITH THE FIRES FROM THE DEEPEST REACHES OF HELL my abhorrence of a book when it moves me to feel that it is shit. -SHIT- ladies and gentlemen. Shit. It's a cuss word and polite bloggers aren't suppose to cuss.

This book blogger is not polite.

This book blogger can, however, separate the author from their book. I can hate a book, openly, expressively, loudly, and in all caps if I want to and still have respect for the writer.** Or I can hate a book, openly, expressively, loudly, and in all caps if I want to and have no respect for the author. That's the way of personal opinions. They're personal and pertain only to me.

There are a plethora of book blogs out there. Some follow a cookie cutter format that is designed to only showcase the more popular, positive specimens of the written word. They give you a base emotional response to a work and promote it based solely on their assurance that "it moved" without ever really telling you what it moved them to, or how. Did you know that there are book bloggers who tailor make their reviews in order to please an author/publisher/book supplier? Did you know that's....those....are lies? And they are rewarded for them? Isn't that...wrong?

So thank you, for telling me that it is impolite to have an opinion that doesn't involve visions of sugar plums, sugar and spice. For a moment I felt bad about my negative responses to some of the awful books I've read and posted about. For a minute I even stopped to worry that I might have hurt an author's feelings. I almost took them down. But then I remembered that I, personally would spurn any such book blog that subscribed to that mentality and it would crush me to know that anyone thought that I could ever possess such a vapid, censored, preprogrammed view of a book.

"I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere." - Pride and Prejudice

There will be negative, hateful book thoughts on this book blog, just as there will be book thoughts made entirely of love, awe, wonderment and devotion. I will continue to read books and share my book thoughts here. I would love to discuss them with you, honestly. There really isn't much that's better to talk about than a good story and there really isn't any better gossip than yapping about a bad one. I also give any author leave to tell me I'm an ungrateful wicked girl when I blog that their book is shit.

I am not yelling at -you- personally. If anyone takes this personally I advise them to handle such an emotion, internally, within their own person.

"Modesty, ... and all that, is very well in its way, but really a little common honesty is sometimes quite as becoming.- Northanger Abbey"

And here's a better one:

""Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Suess"

*As always, any proclamation of love for an author or books excludes Stephanie Meyer for her unforgivable act of afflicting Breaking Dawn on unsuspecting, decent, book reading people. I will hold a grudge life long.
**See above.