why i don't review bad books

I don’t review bad books because there are a lot of them.

No, really. And you don’t need me for that.  You want a bad book, go into a bookstore and pick one up—I have no doubt in your ability to find one.  Actually, what I think, in truth, you’d end up with is a “good, but not great” book.  That’s what most people end up with most of the time.  And frankly, that riles me.  They’re the worst kind, the most insidious. Here’s what happens with one of them: You pick it up, you start reading.  It’s “Ok;” there are parts that are even enjoyable.  And you think to yourself, Well, I’m not ready to claw my eyes out, nor does it make me want to retch, and so you keep reading.  In fact, you don’t even think that.  You don’t think much of anything at all.  And therein lies the problem.

“Good, but not great” books lull you into this false sense of enjoyment, this cradle of mediocrity, and the next thing you know you’re 258 pages into a book that is “fine” but which requires nothing of you whatsoever, and moves you not at all.  When the book is over you think, All right then. And move on to the next thing on your night table.  Two weeks later you remember virtually nothing from the book itself, six months later you can’t quite recall which title it was that you remember so little about, and a year later, you’re in the “I remember so absolutely nothing about this book that I could very easily pick it up and start reading it again” danger zone.  BEWARE: THE “GOOD, BUT NOT GREAT” BOOK!

There is so much great stuff out there, so many incredible books.  Do not settle.  If you are not engaged, or moved, or excited—forget it.  Seriously, put it down.  Read something else.  You will never, in your lifetime, exhaust the library of potential reading material—in fact (and it pains me so to think about this) you won’t get to read everything you want to read, would have loved to read—so don’t waste your valuable damn time.  I read 500 pages of Angle of Repose—as in Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose—before the little bell in my brain finally chimed and I realized I was not amused.  It was fine, but nothing else.  I stopped sixty-four pages before the end.  And I have never, not for one second, regretted it; that’s sixty-four pages worth of time that I could use to read something I love.

Now here, I want to add two things.  The first is: Trust yourself.  Have faith in your own opinion—no one else’s matters; they get to have their own opinions and their own reading lists to go with those opinions, and that isn’t your problem.  And don’t let the big names—authors or reviewers—scare you down.  I probably would have given up on Angle of Repose much earlier were it not Angle of Repose.
The second is: Bear in mind the gods of timing.  Sometimes a book isn’t bad, it just isn’t right.  I have put down many a book that later—days, weeks, years—turned out to be one of the all-stars.  Your judgments really matter, just don’t let them limit you.  Though it is hard for me to imagine, there may come a day when I love Angle of Repose; stranger things have happened.

All right, team, now you know.  Let’s hit the field.