"What I don't understand are the readers who still read those books, while hating on them so ferociously."
Yeah, I'm baffled by that one. If I have liked several of an author's books but then try one I don't like, I'll often (though not always) give them another chance... but after I've tried TWO books and not liked them, I stop reading that author. TWO books is one book too many for me to keep thinking of this as an author whose work I STILL like, even if I used to like it or liked his/her earlier work.
I gather from their own comments that some readers continue reading a writer when they no longer like his/her work because they're longing to repeat the reading experience they had with the author's earlier work; and each time they AGAIN don't get it and find they STILL don't like the author's newer work, they get upset. This attitude represents a tragically flat learning curve. ESPECIALLY in cases where the reader has had this experience with more than one author. Indeed, it exemplifies the popular definition of INSANITY, i.e. doing the same thing over and over and yet expecting a different result.
Another common reason is that readers get attached to characters and, in a series, want to know how the characters will end up, and/or want answers to still-unresolved questions/mysteries/conundrums introduced early in the series, back when they were still enjoying the books, and which have YET to be anwered. I'm much more sympathetic to this reason for continuing to read a writer whose work keeps disappointing in more-recent volumes, since "wanting to know the end" even after no longer liking the authors work makes some sense to me--especially after a reader has read 700,000 or 1,500,000 words about the characters and their world. (OTOH, frankly, having pushed all the way through to the end of Diana Gabaldon's ECHO IN THE BONE... I now regret the effort, regard it as two weeks of my reading life that I'll never get back, and find I DON'T CARE what happens to the characters or the gazillion dangling story threads; so I'm certainly done with -that- author's never-ending tale.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-10-12 06:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm baffled by that one. If I have liked several of an author's books but then try one I don't like, I'll often (though not always) give them another chance... but after I've tried TWO books and not liked them, I stop reading that author. TWO books is one book too many for me to keep thinking of this as an author whose work I STILL like, even if I used to like it or liked his/her earlier work.
I gather from their own comments that some readers continue reading a writer when they no longer like his/her work because they're longing to repeat the reading experience they had with the author's earlier work; and each time they AGAIN don't get it and find they STILL don't like the author's newer work, they get upset. This attitude represents a tragically flat learning curve. ESPECIALLY in cases where the reader has had this experience with more than one author. Indeed, it exemplifies the popular definition of INSANITY, i.e. doing the same thing over and over and yet expecting a different result.
Another common reason is that readers get attached to characters and, in a series, want to know how the characters will end up, and/or want answers to still-unresolved questions/mysteries/conundrums introduced early in the series, back when they were still enjoying the books, and which have YET to be anwered. I'm much more sympathetic to this reason for continuing to read a writer whose work keeps disappointing in more-recent volumes, since "wanting to know the end" even after no longer liking the authors work makes some sense to me--especially after a reader has read 700,000 or 1,500,000 words about the characters and their world. (OTOH, frankly, having pushed all the way through to the end of Diana Gabaldon's ECHO IN THE BONE... I now regret the effort, regard it as two weeks of my reading life that I'll never get back, and find I DON'T CARE what happens to the characters or the gazillion dangling story threads; so I'm certainly done with -that- author's never-ending tale.)