How about buy/borrow/bury-in-your-garden-hoping-to-forget-about-it OR buy/borrow/throw-out-the-window-in-frustration for your categories OR buy/borrow/don't-bother-🙄
Ultimately it's hard to tell people at large not to read a thing, unless you know someone's taste very well.
You said you rarely read books you don't enjoy. Is it because you DNF easily if you know it won't work or you're good at picking the right books for yourself or that you always manage to find enjoyment in every read?
It's very interesting what you say about finding patriarcal flaws to old works and spending more energy changing the present than judging the past. My reading eyes have changed so much in that sense that it's ruined one of my favourite novels in that I can't reread it and see how the author, although progressive and cool and cultured and immensily creative and talented could also be part of the gang of misogynists that love the shape of women in their world without valuing truly any of them or only by chance. With Tolkien, if he's world is very male, at least existing female characters don't appear like silly clichés of what a woman looks like seen from the sofa while she's in the kitchen.
And +1 on the spiders. Can we have a version where Tories or ultra capitalists ate hiding in trees ready to catch you in their net of lies (or is it too literal for fantasy 😋)
It would be a very rare occurrence that I would actively encourage people not to read something, especially if the author is living but occasionally there are things I find troubling or problematic that I would flag. Obviously the metric is very light-hearted!
In terms of rarely reading books I don't enjoy, it's primarily because I am good at picking books for myself - I have a fairly well honed feel for which books I'll enjoy or get something from or not from the first page as well as the genre/blurb etc. I have no qualms about DNFing things though, but don't often feel the need.
And in terms of older books, it's certainly not a clear cut thing and there's a big difference for me between say no female characters in The Hobbit than a troubling/distressing portrayal of women or global majority characters (The Iliad and other literally ancient things are rather an anomaly!). And I'm not sure which author you're talking about, but again for me it's rarely clear cut - whether they are living or not makes a big difference to how I feel, as does the specifics of what has caused distress!
How about buy/borrow/bury-in-your-garden-hoping-to-forget-about-it OR buy/borrow/throw-out-the-window-in-frustration for your categories OR buy/borrow/don't-bother-🙄
Ultimately it's hard to tell people at large not to read a thing, unless you know someone's taste very well.
You said you rarely read books you don't enjoy. Is it because you DNF easily if you know it won't work or you're good at picking the right books for yourself or that you always manage to find enjoyment in every read?
It's very interesting what you say about finding patriarcal flaws to old works and spending more energy changing the present than judging the past. My reading eyes have changed so much in that sense that it's ruined one of my favourite novels in that I can't reread it and see how the author, although progressive and cool and cultured and immensily creative and talented could also be part of the gang of misogynists that love the shape of women in their world without valuing truly any of them or only by chance. With Tolkien, if he's world is very male, at least existing female characters don't appear like silly clichés of what a woman looks like seen from the sofa while she's in the kitchen.
And +1 on the spiders. Can we have a version where Tories or ultra capitalists ate hiding in trees ready to catch you in their net of lies (or is it too literal for fantasy 😋)
It would be a very rare occurrence that I would actively encourage people not to read something, especially if the author is living but occasionally there are things I find troubling or problematic that I would flag. Obviously the metric is very light-hearted!
In terms of rarely reading books I don't enjoy, it's primarily because I am good at picking books for myself - I have a fairly well honed feel for which books I'll enjoy or get something from or not from the first page as well as the genre/blurb etc. I have no qualms about DNFing things though, but don't often feel the need.
And in terms of older books, it's certainly not a clear cut thing and there's a big difference for me between say no female characters in The Hobbit than a troubling/distressing portrayal of women or global majority characters (The Iliad and other literally ancient things are rather an anomaly!). And I'm not sure which author you're talking about, but again for me it's rarely clear cut - whether they are living or not makes a big difference to how I feel, as does the specifics of what has caused distress!