Sharing a Few Unpopular Bookish Opinions

Hello friends, Vera here! This post came about in a weird way – basically, I wanted to share a tiny unpopular opinion with you all (#2 in this post) which prompted me to try to come up with other unpopular opinions I haven’t yet shared here. Not saying that all of these are unique – after all, a lot of unpopular opinions I see around are actually popular opinions by now and the same is probably true for mine – but I had fun writing these down and I can’t wait to discuss them with you. 😊

As always, these are strictly my opinions! No hate intended, and I’d love to hear different opinions as well. Now, without further ado, let’s discuss these opinions!

Trying to Avoid Recommending Problematic Media

Up to a point, I do believe that you can consume problematic media critically, but there are certain kind of behaviors that will absolutely make me side eye you. With the release of Bridgerton – which I did watch and read for the record – there were some people who argued that the show’s ignorance of consent is acceptable, which, I suppose, is an opinion. My issue was that some these people tried to push others to give a show a chance, even though some of those who were firmly against trying the show are sexual assault survivors.

No matter how you choose to interpret a piece of media, you shouldn’t ever push people to try something that makes them uncomfortable or that can potentially trigger them. That was a very particular example, but more generally, I try not to recommend my “problematic favorites“, especially because there are so many books – many by marginalized authors – that don’t receive half as much popularity as the problematic books and I’d rather recommend those. Obviously, I don’t necessarily know everything about the books and other forms of media I consume, so I can’t say I’d never recommend them, but I’ll always try to pay attention to criticism and then avoid featuring problematic things.

The Adaptation Can Absolutely Be Better Than the Original

I think many of us have seen adaptations that did a better job in certain things than the original media. For me, the Hunger Games adaptations are not just loyal to the books and well-done, but actually better than the original novels. I feel like the creators followed the original rather closely while also making it even better, for instance by making the story’s flow and pacing better. Similarly, I was somewhat bored the first time I read Good Omens, as any parts that didn’t involve Crowley and Aziraphael felt subpar to their scenes. But then the creators of the show managed to present every character – and thus every subplot – in a way that made me enjoy it all.

Fanfiction Writers Can Be Extremely Talented

I started to read fanfiction in 2020 – a decidedly bright spot in an otherwise cursed year – and I have to say, many fanfiction writers are incredibly talented. I feel like there’s this belief that the writing in fanfiction must be subpar compared to published books, and I’ll admit that I myself may had agreed with that before diving headfirst into fanfiction. However, this is far from the truth. Fanfiction writers are clever and creative and they can make me love the characters even more than I already loved them after consuming the media they originally appeared in.

Judging Books By Their Covers Is Not Evil

I’ve read about the difficulties of self-publishing and I know that many authors have no means to pay for an expensive cover-design. Also, traditionally published authors rarely, if ever, have a say in what their covers will look like. On top of that, the kind of covers people like is very subjective – I for one still enjoy covers with a cute graphic designs while others have had enough of these.

Because of all these things, I’m not going to write off a book that sounds good simply because I hate its cover, but realistically, the first thing I see of a book is its cover, especially recently, as I’ve been strictly online book-shopping because of the pandemic. Not forming some kind of expectations or a prediction about the content is hard, which is why I think it’s important for books to have covers that represent their content well. In any case, what I’m saying is that covers are created to represent a book and to make it appealing, so I don’t think it’s evil to judge books based on their covers, especially if we know to treat self-published novels’ covers with less judgement.

Book-Twitter Sometimes Unnecessarily Blows Up Drama

I’m not talking about calling out problematic authors or creators here, let’s just get that out of the way. There are, however, certain ‘hot topics’ that keep appearing on twitter periodically, and then everyone jumps on them and starts talking about them, sometimes blowing one person’s bad take up in a way that isn’t very useful, in my opinion. What I mean is, sometimes I would never even have seen a bad take – i.e. audiobooks are not real reading (wrong!) – had people on twitter not blown it up by talking about it for days. Sometimes this is simply annoying, but other times it is actually counter-productive. There have been a few instances when a person with hateful opinions actually got more views and followers because their bad take was discussed so thoroughly. Granted, people should be called out, so I’m not sure how this could have been avoided, but it was maddening to see this person find a similarly hateful audience that they wouldn’t have (not so fast anyhow) had book twitter not shouted about them for weeks.

Let’s chat!

What are some of your unpopular opinions? Do we have any in common? Do you agree that most unpopular opinions are actually popular opinions at this point?