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This week I'm looking at hype surrounding books. We all know what it's like right? A cover reveal of this gorgeous looking book appears on blogs, book tours begin, and the blurb appears on Amazon and Goodreads. This sounds like the most exciting book ever and as people get their hands on the ARC, everyone seems to be raving about it and giving out 5 star reviews. You are waiting for your copy and the anticipation is rising! What happens when you finally get your hands on it? Sometimes it lives up to the hype and sometimes we are left deflated by it.
I'm not a person who is swept along by hype to be honest. I'll look at blurbs and reviews and will decide based on what it written whether I think it is my kind of book. If I like the sound of it, I'll try to get hold of it and read it. If it sounds like too much of the tropes I hate or not to my taste, I'll give it a miss even if everyone seems to love it. I've known people that are so keen to be talking about all the popular books that they'll read it even if the plot doesn't appeal, just to get involved in the conversation. It's not something that I personally do but I'm not going to say people are wrong to do it. It's your blog, your reading and you have to do what feels right for you. I do get that if you have a book blog with a lot of followers or you are trying to build a bigger following, this might be useful or even necessary to you. The more conversations we get involved in, the easier to meet new like-minded readers. Yeah, I get why people read all the hyped books even if they don't appeal.
I'm not bothered if I haven't read the popular books that everyone likes as I just worry about my own reading and share the books I enjoy with those who read my blog. I have read some books that were really hyped. Harry Potter is the obvious one. To be honest I hadn't heard of these books until a friend at work told me about them in 2001. In 2003 the hype for book five was exploding all over the place and I finally read the first four. Now I'm a mega fan! I heard a lot about The Hunger Games and reading the blurb I was hooked which made me go out and buy the first book. I loved it. It was the same when I heard about things like The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory from friends. In recent months, I've seen the interest in The Extinction Trials which was described as Jurassic Park meets The Hunger Games. I admit that the hype did worry me but it turned out that I really enjoyed it.
More recently, if friends are talking about books in the genres I read, I will at least check them out on Goodreads and see if it sounds interesting for me. This happened when Hunter Shea was mentioned to me. I took one look at the description for Swamp Monster Massacre and off I went. Now his new books are must buys for me. Reading his books has also led Amazon to recommend a ton of creature feature books to me and that continues to happen, keeping my ereaders nice and full! The more of them I read, the more get recommended and I have a ton of them to read! It's great when the book really does work for you!
There is nothing worse than really looking forward to a book that people rave about and you really want and then finding that you really didn't enjoy it. Sometimes that seems inevitable when books claim to be the new Harry Potter, a mix of popular series or declare if you liked blah you'll love this! I hate that kind of marketing. If you make declarations like that, people may go into reading it with certain expectations, and however good the book is, the readers may still be disappointed by what it was not. And if you say 'if you love Neil Gaiman you'll love this' then people like me who don't like his writing may not look at the book at all. Using this marketing might also entice readers who might not have read it otherwise. They go into it looking for another Hunger Games and it falls flat ie Fire And Flood! Yeah you got the sales for it, but now you're getting a pile of negative reviews for it! Market the book based on it's own strengths instead of comparing it to something else.
There are certainly books that for me did not live up to the hype. Bear in mind that this is my personal opinion and I'm not saying the books are rubbish, just that they didn't do it for me. These include Catch 22, The Hitchhikers Guide, Wicked, Fight Club, His Dark Materials, The Lovely Bones, The Magicians, The Casual Vacancy to name a few. There are different reasons for not liking these books but I was disappointed not to like them. That can be the big issue with book hype. It is designed to get us interested in books before their release so that sales will be high but it doesn't always work for the individual reader.I really hate looking forward to something and then feeling really deflated by it. I know we risk that every time we open a book but hype can make us want it so much that we're crushed if we find it crap!
Are you swept along by the hype or do you not pay much attention to it? Which hyped books lived up to your expectations? Which hyped books were a massive disappointment to you? What hyped books are you waiting for to be released, or haven't read yet?
I don’t really care about hype, either. If a book sounds interesting, I’ll read it. I’ve read a few books because of hype, with mixed results. Everything seems to work best when I pick out my own books. I do my own thing and let everybody else do their thing.
ReplyDeleteAj @ Read All The Things!
Exactly! I know my own tastes and though I might branch out occasionally, I'm happy in my comfort zone. I used to get annoyed by Goodreads Friends who would read a book then recommend it to everyone, not caring what genres we liked or hated!
DeleteI am constantly getting burned by hyped books. Like you, I don't pick them up because they're hyped, I pick them up because I'm interested in them. But more often than not, the hyped ones end up disappointing me. In fact, now, if I see a book I want to read and it's really hyped, I let the hype die down. Then I can read it "in peace." Great discussion!
ReplyDeleteThe read it in peace concept is quite interesting. I think I do that by accident as it takes me so long to get round to reading everything! I guess that's the advantage of a huge tbr...
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