Books that i find subjectively bad usually leave me with little more than mild dissatisfaction, generally for feeling like a waste of time. However, there have been a few (about 4 total of all the books ive read out of hundreds) that provoke a unique negative reaction.
These books are not noticeably worse in terms of writing quality or story than another book I might subjectively consider bad. Instead, there's an indescribable quality about them that generates this response from me. Of these ~four books, they elicit even physical discomfort and strong negative emotions.
My reaction seems totally disproportionate to the book's actual content, which is neither graphically disturbing nor extremely offensive. It's a rare, unique experience, almost as if these particular books have an uncanny ability to resonate with me in a deeply negative way.
It just happened again and I still can’t understand wtf is going on. I can’t stress enough that this isn’t the normal frustration one gets when reading something they dislike, it’s almost like a panic attack response without the total hopelessness that comes with panic attacks, one that lasts for months to years like a song you cant get out of your head. I tried to explain this to a friend but they thought I was just fucking with them. Again, to clarify, a very rare experience that happens once every few years. Any of you experience something like this?
by AnonTimTam
3 Comments
No that’s never happened to me.
What was the book?
I usually just get annoyed I wasted time and DNF and never think about it again.
I wish this would happen to me with books. Seems at least more resonant than just a “huh that was fucked”.
I’ve sort of had something similar. I read The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom back in probably 2010 or around that time. I’m sure it’s far from the worst book ever written, but I personally found it to be so bad that it made me unreasonably angry! I’d made myself finish it because I kept telling myself it might get better, there might be a big payoff at the end… Nope: a complete waste of time on a terrible book.
It’s something that I still think about now, and I still get upset about! It took me quite a while to realise that this particular experience coincided with me having some harsh realisations about myself and why things were going wrong in my life, and ‘misjudging’ this book and ‘wasting’ so much time on it triggered a lot of feelings around character flaws that I felt I had, and felt were causing me issues.
Finishing that book, despite my better judgement, felt like slipping back into problematic habits of ignoring red flags and ignoring my instincts, so it provoked a bit of a crisis within me. I know that sounds very dramatic, haha, but I was really going through it at the time! Whenever I feel low or I feel like I’ve made mistakes, I think of that book, and I feel all the anger and disappointment in myself all over again!