Could be pacing, characterization, ending, slowness, plot, cheesiness, morbidity, etc. For me it's usually that there wasn't much of a plot- a lot of the books I read aren't very plot driven, especially when they focus on exploring a rich world instead. China Mieville is one of my favorite authors and his books tend to be worldbuilding rather than plot focused, which I really love because he's so good at it. Or that they don't make any sense- I like novels that are weird and confusing and take some effort to understand. Like If On A Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. Apparently some people think it's too confusing but I think it's delightful and I don't mind being a little lost at first. I also don't always mind a book with an unclear or anticlimactic ending, which some people can't stand.
by moss42069
47 Comments
Maybe excessive details. Sometimes, an author goes overboard on the details to a point where I find myself getting hooked on the entire book.
“These characters aren’t likable” and “this author uses too many big words” are the most common 1 star reviews on some of my favourite books. Both of which are also their best features, imo!
The books I like are sometimes called pretentious or boring for being too slow (plot wise). I like books that explore the inner workings of the characters, and the plot sometimes takes a backseat so that the characters can be more fleshed out
They get called popcorn novels a lot in a derisive way.
I see that as the absolute best positive. “Oh no a book I can take a ride with and enjoy! The horror!”
[removed]
I like novels that are character-driven and offer a lot of social commentary, e.g. “The Idiot” by Elif Batuman and I always hear people complaining that “nothing happens.”
Some readers might find these types of books lacking in plot or clarity, especially when they lean heavily on intricate settings and unconventional narratives. I like mine extra cheesy
“nothing really even happens!”….ahh, you’ve discovered character driven novels
People complain about my favorite series Nevernight because they use 3 different forms of text to compartmentalize what the text means. It is really easy to pick up on, but reddit doesn’t seem to think so.
When what they’re complaining about is the whole point of the book.
One of my favorite book is The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu. Some reviews complain about how the main character is a depressing loser who lacks the desire to get ahead in life and I’m like yes, it’s a book about a man suffering from PTSD and depression from escaping a war torn country, who is paralyzed with guilt and pressure to succeed in the US.
I like classics and a lot of people really hate them because of being forced to read them for school.
“Sexy book is sexy? Gross!!!”
“Dark, gothic book has dark, gothic tropes and themes? Immoral!!!”
“Classic novels are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. and have nothing to teach us! Check your privilege!”
Stephen King not knowing how to write a good ending. He has many stories with great endings and none that are truly bad. He doesn’t write with an outline, instead preferring to let the story tell itself. This doesn’t always lead to the most polished resolutions and that’s really not a problem. Most things in life don’t get tied up with a nice little bow. This honestly sounds like people just parroting what others have said most of the time.
Also Stephen King, his books being too long. Again, this is tied into him not writing with an outline, but it’s also because of the amount of characterization he does. He’s probably one of the best writers I’ve read when it comes to characterization and it’s arguably his greatest strength. You’ll know more about the life, habits, and opinions of characters that are dead within a chapter of being introduced than some writers show you in an entire novel. Add in the plot and yeah, the page count is gonna start climbing.
The Wheel of Time is a slog in the middle. I feel like people who say this just don’t like the side characters or appreciate the complexities of the setting and I really can’t relate. The secondary characters are just as interesting and compelling as the main cast and the world is fascinating to learn more about. If the story just followed Rand on his quest the whole time it wouldn’t be nearly as good.
Predictability.
Yeah, fair, but sometimes that’s exactly what I want.
Melodrama. The worst thing a book can be to me is boring. I love big dramatic emotional scenes and I don’t care how unrealistic the story is. I’ve been obsessively reading a particular author the past few months and recently found out a lot of people hate her because she writes “melodrama” (yes, it’s Jodi Picoult).
I read a Goodreads review that said Pride and Prejudice was just chronicling visits to people’s houses/19th century dating show 💀
He must have gotten paid by the word. 🙄
I like *The Secret History* a lot and the 1* reviews tend to say it’s pretentious and the characters are unlikable. To me though, Donna Tartt tends to write what she loves. She’s never seems like she’s inundating you with Homeric quotes or classics (or art history in the case of *The Goldfinch*) because she wants to sound smart, but because she’s really in love with the subject. The characters are unlikable, but—as someone who is picky about unlikable characters because it has to be done WELL; you can’t just make your character an ass and tout that it’s deep—I think they’re really fascinating and Tartt is so great about actually showing why these characters are interesting, alluring, and human despite their awfulness.
The Harry Potter series.
Since the creator’s been revealed to be….well, who she is as a person (read: a fucking idiot), the books have been scrutinized for being not good.
Personally, the books remain solid. They are masterclasses in world-building and characterization. I’ve read the whole series lately and and I find myself falling in love all over again at 30 years old like I did when I was 8.
I will never excuse JK Rowling for her stance on transgender people and the LGBT community at large ever. It is a reprehensible thought to think that people – based solely their orientation or gender – are negative.
I will say she was – at a point – a
brilliant writer.
For me it’s that they’re misery porn. A romantic book that makes me cry is a book I love.
That an author is sexist/racist/bigoted because of the characters in their book.
my favourite books are all books I’ve never seen anyone talk about or are from a series soooo…
but, the one book I like that has seen discourse for is Maus by Art Speigelman and most of it’s complaints are ignorant fools who got it banned for nudity and being morbid, which is a terrible take for a book about WWII
“I couldn’t get into it because I can’t relate to the story/characters” like no shit, you’re not a centuries old wizard or a serial killer hell-bent on a grudge. Why do people need to relate to a story to enjoy it? I enjoy wild stories *because* they’re nothing like me or my life. Otherwise they’d be boring.
I have learned to live with the fact that there is no pleasing everyone when it comes to books. When I read supernatural romances I am told they are trashy, but if I read literary classics I am told they are too high brow. Same with pacing – if I read something slow burn it’s boring, but if I read something with lots of action and adventure it lacks substance. Luckily, I don’t give flying F what other people think about my books. If I enjoy them, I read them. 🙂
I tended to like unusually structured books… and often short stories, poems, essays, etc that don’t fit the typical arc of what a book is supposed to be. Most of my friends are into contemporary novels, and especially fantasy or dystopian literature — which I do enjoy — so I suppose the complaint would be structure and form, and in many cases the lack of a clear plot.
I love The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit but the Eagles save the day too many times.
“Difficult to root for the main character because of xxx” I love messy/chaotic/unreliable narrators.
I like classics the best, so the main complaint is that they are too wordy or boring
I absolutely love unhappy endings. Happy ever after is so fucking boring and overrated, give me a story that makes me feel a pain that lasts for a week, something that leaves an impression on my soul because the ending was brutal but nessisary for the conclusion.
I love to read horror novels.
“How dare this author allow a bad thing to happen to an animal”
“How dare this author allow a bad thing to happen to a character I like”
The other extremely common one I see makes me think our attention spans aren’t what they used to be, I’ll see “This book is so slow” or “I’m 40 pages in and it feels like nothing has happened yet” about books I flew through and remember as exciting reads.
Lord of the Rings gets a lot of complaints for the beginning being to slow. Gandalf wasn’t sure Frodo had the Ruling Ring, and had Frodo left hastily he would have spoiled the whole thing. Bilbo nearly did beforehand with his “party trick.”
It also has been accused of being racist for being East v. West (this was a common theme in pre modern literature) and also describing the Southern Numenorians as “Black Numenorians.” Black has nothing to do with skin color, but with them being corrupted by evil. Swarthy is a pretty generic term for the Southrons and Soldiers of Rhun.
I get it, Tolkien was British and they are not known for being racially sensitive. However, Tolkien was not writing for a modern audience, nor from a modern racial perspective.
Second, people complaining about the Scouring of the Shire. One of Tolkien’s main, and highly personal, points was that once one has gone to war, one can’t just come home again. War changes the person, and when they return, home itself has changed The Scouring was highly personal to Tolkien and a critical part of the narrative and ending. I understand this because I have deployed to a combat zone, and in a strictly legal sense, am a combat veteran. It does change you regardless of how minor an incident can be. You don’t just come home again.
I’ve also heard complaints about Tolkien’s prose. Tolkien didn’t write for a modern audience, so his prose will not be what a modern expects.
As for lack of strong, female characters, yes the world Tolkien built is male centric. Of course it will be. But Galadriel is a badass even if it mostly happens off page. She also possesses a wisdom which is rare in Middle Earth, and wears a Ring of Power. Her hot headed days are behind her by the time the LOTR events happen. Arwen is a strong woman of her own right, who is more noble than many. Eowyn disguises herself as a man just so she can go to war, and faces down the Witch King, which would have sent any other member of the Rohirrim running within seconds.
Finally: “What was Aragorn’s tax policy???” Well GRRM, again that is a bad misunderstanding of how Tolkien wrote. If anyone has seen the old *Excalibur* movie from the early 1980s, there is the quote “The King is the Land, and the Land is the King.” From a medieval perspective a good king will rule justly, and the realm will prosper. The emphasis is on the right to rule, which Aragorn did have, as well as being a wise ruler. Usurping a throne could lead to disaster, just see the plot of Macbeth.
Thank you for reading (and hopefully not downvoting) my TED talk, please meet me at the Green Dragon Inn or Prancing Pony for more rants.
I love watching the Romance readers criticise the Traditional Fantasy books I read. Books written for adult reading level instead of hormonal teenagers looking for hot fae guy books.
>Like If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. Apparently some people think it’s too confusing but I think it’s delightful and I don’t mind being a little lost at first.
At first? I was lost in the third part of it, it got increasingly weird, and not in a good way. That spy story got a bit over the top. I didn’t even care about the stories any more. The first part of the book was nice though.
People say the books I like are too descriptive or shallow 😂😂😂
Whenever I tell people I mainly read fantasy, they think everything is like the hobbit. I often hear “ohh with elves and Dragons”. Not every fantasy books is like the Hobbit! It often results in them looking down at my reading because they didn’t like the hobbit….
I’ve heard people complain about Tolkien describing trees too much, or say they skipped the poems. For me, these are the parts that make his world special.
Not enough queer representation. Please, I am not reading a book set in the 1960’s with the expectation of there being gays?
I’ve gotten in to reading memoirs lately and some of the reviews I’ve seen really infuriate me.
I once saw a 2* review of ‘Im Glad My Mom Died’ by Jeanette McCurdy that said something along the lines of ‘she set this book up to be all about her mom, but her mom dies in the first third and then she just goes on about her eating disorder, which is nothing to do with her mom.’
First of all, it had ***everything*** to do with her mom. Secondly, you cannot criticise a memoir the same way you would criticise a piece of fiction. Someone’s real life experiences are not going to conform to a tidy three-act arc with satisfying endings and complex character development.
Taste in books is very personal, I’m not offended by someone saying a memoir just wasn’t for them, but I found it so strange to this person seemingly wanted MORE detail of the trauma that JM’s mother put her through, when the whole book is very much centred around that.
Too depressing/no happy ending, characters unlikeable, hard to follow, nothing happens. The negative reviews of my favourite books, Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruin, often hit *all* these points, hah. I also enjoyed Murakami’s 1Q84 and VanderMeer’s Annihilation, which get hit with similar objections.
Slightly tangential, this, but my friends have formed a book club this year and it’s fascinating how little common ground our opinions share. I’m basically in it for catharsis and seeing damaged people either redeem themselves or get what’s coming to them, whereas one friend wants optimism and inspiration, and another one primarily wants a clever plot and good worldbuilding. The two most divisive books we’ve read so far make a weird, weird couple: Annihilation and Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons. I thought our resident optimist would love the latter, but she hated the protagonist so much that she found the book depressing. :’)
The New Weird/Weird is vastly underrated as a genre. I really love stories that challenge me to think in new patterns, and I’m always disappointed when I try to recommend Gormenghast, Chasing the Moon, House of Leaves, The Master and Margherita, etc. only to told that it’s too much of headache.
“Too sad”.
I’ve seen this “critique” in relation to Khaled Hosseini’s novels, which I love.
Some stories simply are very, very sad. Authors don’t owe you an uplifting ending (although I would argue that The Kite Runner ends on a hopeful note). A book filled with devastation shouldn’t immediately be deemed trauma porn.
I like books that are descriptive enough to give me an accurate mental image of the world in which I am being immersed but apparently it is borderline purple prose
I love a good epic high fantasy series, but the info dump often required in book 1 can be a chore.
God I’m going to get downvoted to hell but in my experience “main character was unlikable” 99% of the time means “main character is an antihero who isn’t a white dude”
Multiple POV. The main complaints I see are that they get confusing and it sucks when you get to the perspective of a character that you don’t like so it sucks to get through.
I LOVE this style of writing. I feel like I get a more rounded view of the story as a whole and get into the heads of multiple characters. Sure, there are chapters for a character I am less interested in, but it just makes me want to keep reading so I can get back to the characters I want to see. Done well, the author will trickle in details in each perspective that you wouldn’t get if we just had the POV of the main character.
Idk, Kate Morton does this with all of her books, and I love them. She’s my favorite non-horror/thriller author.
I have a tie:
1. “Too sad/heavy.” I appreciate books that acknowledge that the worst case scenarios can and do happen. I’m not looking for trauma porn—the point is not to wallow in relentless suffering. But I do want to acknowledge how terrible certain experiences are, both for an individual and for the world at large. Then I want to explore what happens next; I find that brings me more comfort than avoiding any particular subject or topic.
2. “Nothing happened.” The character had an epiphany that completely shifted the tone of the novel during that 3-paragraph metaphor about the water cycle. It was integral to the story and left me emotionally devastated.
I really enjoy books with characters who are all completely hateable. Think The Great Gatsby. I don’t know why, something about them is much more compelling to me than a book full of heroes. So when a review says, “I hated every character in this,” I pretty much always put it on my TBR list.