Blogger: Rachelle Gardner
It never ceases to amaze me how the eight members of my book club can disagree so vehemently in our opinions of certain books. Recently we had a meeting to discuss one of the best novels I’ve ever read. I was so excited for the meeting. I sat down and started gushing, “Oh my gosh, I LOVED this book, it’s been such a treat to read, so beautifully written, such an incredible story… blah, blah, blah.” I sort of tapered off my rhapsodizing when I noticed less-than-enthusiastic looks on the faces of a couple of the people in my group.
“So… what? Didn’t you like the book?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, of course, I mean… yeah, it was okay.”
Okay. OKAY?? Seriously, how could they not LOVE this book??
Ahem.
This is what it means to be in a business based on people’s totally subjective opinions. It’s not just your query or your proposal being scrutinized by people with vastly differing tastes. Eventually, it will be your book. People will discuss it, and some will love it. Others will wonder, “How did this tripe get published?”
So all up and down the line, we have to deal with subjectivity. Some will love what you’ve written, others won’t. Every opinion you get from someone is just that: an opinion.
Come to think of it, this subjectivity is one of the reasons I don’t go to great lengths to describe why I’m passing on someone’s project. No matter what I say, I could be wrong. I don’t want to go around making pronouncements as if they’re meaningful. I’m just one person. It’s just my opinion. I don’t want to reject a future bestseller, only to be quoted later as saying in my letter, “Your writing sucks and this will never sell.”
Here are some alleged quotes from rejection letters on famous books.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding: “an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”
The Diary of Anne Frank: “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the curiosity level.”
Carrie by Stephen King: “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.”
Animal Farm by George Orwell: “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.”
Regarding John le Carré, author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: “He hasn’t got any future.”
Of course, it always sounds stupid after they’ve gone on to win awards and sell millions. From where I sit, it’s easier just to say, “It’s not for me.”
As for you—if you’re not getting the responses you want, keep trying. You probably haven’t found the right readers yet.
Are there any books that everyone else seems to LOVE, but you just can’t get into? Or the reverse—books you love that others don’t seem excited about? And what are some examples of subjectivity in people’s responses to YOUR writing?
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No books immediately come to mind, but every time I hear “The Voice” or “American Idol”, I am reminded why hearing the the sense I feel I could most easily afford to lose.
But everyone else…including my wife…seems to love the current style of contemporary music.
The only real subjectivity I’ve heard in response to “Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart” focused in three areas –
1) Why does the protagonist in a Christian book have a drinking problem, and why do you show him giving beer to a dog?
2) There’s a ghost in the story…so you’ve resorted to necromancy to try to get people to buy your book?
3) You have Catholic characters, and in one part even introduce a PRIEST! Don’t you know that the Roman church isn’t really Christian?
My responses, when given to opportunity to offer them, have been these…
1) Fancy a beer? And one for your gerbil?
2) We’re having a seance tonight…I’ll send you some “good spirits” (which also covers #1)
3) Yep, proudly serving the antichrist since 33 AD
On the other hand, I do enjoy opinions like “I’m giving this to my Dad when I finish it, he was in Viet Nam!”
(Well…uh, could you BUY a copy to give him..?)
And “Is there a sequel?”
(Yes, but I am learning that a good sequel is very, very hard to write.)
OK, my turn to ask a question…
Rachelle, I was surprised to see that you’re a member of a book club; don’t know why I SHOULD be surprised, but an agent is a book club seems rather like someone taking a busman’s holiday.
I am sure I’m not the only one who will ask…how does this affect your work as an agent? Do you develop (or, perhaps, retain) the facility to see books through the eyes of “amateur” readers, or am I assuming an amateur / professional dichotomy in the facility of reading where none, in fact, exists?
Andrew, your post made me laugh out loud in parts. 🙂 And, if it makes you feel better, Randy Alcorn has a detective who give beer to his dog in his book, Deception.
Thanks, Jeanne!
I once hosted the Great Canine Wine-tasting Party…I dropped a 4-liter bottle, and the dogs got the wine before I could shoo them away.
Hallie the White Shepherd found she could only walk backwards, and walked herself into a corner, which frustrated her deeply.
Atascadero the Coonhound and Daisy the Hyena were walking a conga line through the kitchen, falling over every few steps.
And Tulip the (male) Pit Bull jumped onto my desk, cleared all of my papers (and my laptop) off, and settled down for a nap.
Grinning. I can only imagine . . .
I liked the dog drinking the beer, Andrew. I’ve heard of guinea pigs who liked beer and our sons are always sneaking their pet chickens up onto their bunk beds. Pets are a fun and wacky part of life that I love to see on the pages of a book.
Another vote for the beer-drinking dogs…thank you, Kristen!
They are indeed a wonderfully enriching factor. When I’m too ill to try to do any airplane work, Sylvia the Big Pit Bull and Ladron the Cruise Director from Hell (a heeler) hide my tools.
Like today. Sylvia disappeared around the corner of the house, carrying a hacksaw. Not something you see every day.
Andrew, many agents and editors in my acquaintance are in book clubs! We get to have fun too, don’t we? I know Janet loves her book club as much as I love mine.
My particular book group is special and inspires envy among the locals. We’ve been together nearly ten years; all members work full time in publishing and half are multi-published authors. Our conversations are just as interesting as you might expect. 🙂 And while we all retain a huge love of reading, we are completely incapable of setting aside our editorial pickyness.
I’ve never understood book clubs. I like to sit down and read a book in one sitting or, at most, a few days. How can people keep talking about the same book for weeks?
I would love to be a fly on the wall!
Scratch that. I do know how to set up electronic surveillance.
If wishes were horses, beggars could ride…and I’ve got Secretariat!
Whoo-hoo!
Janet Ann Collins…
Weeks??? I can tell you’ve never been in a book club! We read a book, discuss it for an hour, then spend the rest of the 2-hour meeting talking about life and all kinds of other stuff. Plus eating yummy snacks. You don’t know what you’re missing! 🙂
That does sound better than the other book clubs I’ve heard about where they study a chapter or two at every meeting.
Rachelle, your book club sounds like a blast. No wonder you’ve been together so long. 🙂
There’s an old joke about the spirit of an old geezer who approaches “The Pearly Gates,” where Saint Peter takes out his book and begins reading to him about the sins he committed during his life, and after the saint finishes reading each entry, the geezer’s spirit barks, “Sez who?” The point is that each criticism depends on the source of subjective judgement. In the end we should remember that opinions are like noses; everybody has one. Grin and Bear it!”
Love that. Opinions are like noses. Everybody has one. 🙂 Great truth. 🙂
Um…that wasn’t a joke.
That was me, in my most recent near-death experience.
One book I totally did not get was “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Everybody raved, but to me it was unreadable. (I ranted for days about all the character names sounding alike). When my son went to college, he read it just to see what I was grumbling about and he loved it.
Sometimes it stings when a comment is made about my work – I want to say “Did you actually read it?” but I need to remember that if the reader becomes confused at any point, it is an indication that I need to rewrite that scene to clarify. I am teachable enough to do that. Still stings.
Yeah, I used to think that everyone will love a great book. Strange, but not true. Each person with love the type of great book that they enjoy. Now, to write the kind of book I enjoy in a great way. That is a challenge.
Belonging to a book club was eye-opening for me as a writer. On the surface, we ten women look very much alike. Suburban, Christian, middle-class, college-educated, chose to be stay-at-home moms… We’re great friends and adore each other. But we rarely all love or all hate the same books. And we can never predict who will fall in the loving or hating camps!
As an author, this helped me weather book reviews. If all ten of my beloved friends can’t like the same book, how can I expect thousands of readers I’ve never met to all love my books? I can’t.
Sarah, thank you for addressing this…I had wondered whether I should join a book club, or not.
By the way, was it you who recently described the Labrador as “heart of gold, head of wood, stomach of iron”?
I read it to Chris, our yellow lab. He vehemently disagreed (especially with the’heart of gold’ bit…he thinks he’s tough), but in the background, Tammy, the Pit who is his BFF, nodded sagely.
He does, after all, eat drywall.
Yes, that was me. Our Daisy ate drywall too. And carpet. And rocks. She’s a bit more discerning now in middle age than in her puppy years. Although she still loves socks, pens, and wooden spoons.
I love your perspective, Sarah!
Chris still has a way to go. Aside from drywall, he’s limited his gourmand explorations to carpet, a mattress, and a box spring. Oh, and an end table.
The weird thing is that in a house full of Pit Bulls…he’s the undisputed Alpha, and he doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his body. he just has to wag his tail, and the Pits roll over and wag their whole bodies.
His predecessor as Alpha was a black lab. Also completely gentle, yet his authority and leadership was never questioned. He ate wooden fences.
Great thoughts here…the odds are just not in our favor for 100% thumbs up 100% of the time. Be thankful for the good reviews and move on. 🙂
It really does just go back to the fact, like you said, that opinions vary so. We just have to do the work we feel God calling us to, and trust that He’ll open the right doors in his right time.
The quotes of rejections from now-famous books both made me grin and was eye opening.
I talked with people who loved The Hunger Games trilogy. It’s not a set I intend to buy. I enjoyed reading the story, but the writing style didn’t grab me, if that makes sense. But, I read all three, so that says something. 🙂
I haven’t published yet, but coming from a contest side of it. I have found that people either like or dislike my writing. There’s not a lot of in between. I entered a contest recently where I got two very high scores, and one very mediocre score. I took some things away from this judge’s comments, but I realized this person didn’t get my writing style. That’s okay.
Hopefully, if/when I publish, I will be able to keep the same sort of mindset when reviews come in. Something tells me it may be a little more difficult…..
Jeanne, I’m glad you brought up contests. The responses I’ve gotten have been so subjective, but still very helpful.
Great example with mentioning contests! So true.
Our book luck recently read Six Years by Harlon Coben. I loved it but the group was very much divided in our opinions. I found it interesting that some of the things I enjoyed most were things others said spoiled the story.
I really enjoyed Six Years! But some of my friends didn’t.
As a writer, any story that isn’t fully engaging sends me into critique mode. I focus on the structure and punctuation, and the door to negativity flies open.
And don’t get me started on books I used to like and now don’t, and vice versa (but I’m still loving Little House and Tom Sawyer).
If everyone liked the same things just imagine how boring the world would be. God made us all different so we have different tastes in books and everything else. The hard part is finding ways to reach the people who like our kinds of books.
Yes, but if everyone shared MY tastes, there would be no problems.
Just appoint me the Supreme Arbiter of Taste. No worries!
Janet, see my response to your other comment above. 🙂
What a great post. I think this is part of why I have never joined a book club. I don’t want to feel like I am justifying my opinions of a book.
I could never understand the popularity of The Great Gatsby. I was tortured with it as required reading in high school and forced to watch the movie too. It will never be for me.
I loathed Gatsby until I got to the last page; the image of the green light on Daisy’s dock has haunted me ever since.
Oh boy, I would NEVER survive in a book club.
Mostly because I umm, would be far too unable to not snort my way through someone waxing poetic on books I deem ridicu…umm, not my favourite. 😀
A book club that you would not survive should rethink its own reason for being.
You could hand pick your members. 🙂
I think me, myself, and I would be a great start! Hee hee!! 🙂
There’s two that come to mind.
I finally read the Help last year, and I didn’t enjoy the characters at all. I understood the point of the story, but I didn’t enjoy reading it.
I couldn’t even get past the first chapter of the Book Thief.
Oh how I LOVE this post, Rachelle! The examples of rejections of famous books is oddly comforting. I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance one summer in preparation for my high school AP English class. I loved it and found it so fascinating. Most of my classmates thought the exact opposite. To each his/her own!
Rachelle, I laughed at your comment about discussing the book for an hour and then you spend the rest of your time eating and chatting about other things. Our club (we call ourselves the Mystery girlZ) go out to a restaurant for our book club. We talk about the book for maybe 15 minutes and then gab the rest of the time over our meal! Oh…and don’t forget dessert! YUM! Always a fun time.
Book clubs are awesome!
🙂
Thank you sooo much for this post, Rachelle. It is very helpful for those of us who are running that slow and steady race. :0)