book lovers, shut up
For a bookish person, I cannot abide book-lovers.
I had better explain.
There is a certain class of book-lover I find irritating. They are part of online communities; they may run YouTube channels or they may simply participate in book groups on social media. Nothing wrong with that. But if you go to them expecting a brisk discussion of books--the actual substance of books--you will be disappointed.
Take the YouTubers, for instance. I could name names, but they are all alike. Here are the things they do, with reasons why they're dumb:
1 wasn't even Avengers: Infinity War: Actually, it was Twelve Years a Slave, and a handful of others have got me a little misty-eyed, but let me talk about Avengers for a second. When I saw it in the theater, there were two or three college girls in my row who absolutely LOST IT when everybody started dying. I don't want to say "it's just a comic book movie," but...it's just a comic book movie. Not Bucky, not Groot, not even a whimpering Peter Parker was enough to stir my stone-cold heart. But the girls, you'd have thought they'd just seen their own families butchered. I wanted to smack the lot of them and say, "Get a grip, you ninnies!"
I had better explain.
There is a certain class of book-lover I find irritating. They are part of online communities; they may run YouTube channels or they may simply participate in book groups on social media. Nothing wrong with that. But if you go to them expecting a brisk discussion of books--the actual substance of books--you will be disappointed.
Take the YouTubers, for instance. I could name names, but they are all alike. Here are the things they do, with reasons why they're dumb:
- "Book hauls" - These comprise about ninety percent of the content on an average "Booktube" channel. The video thumbnail will exclaim "BOOK HAUL!" and show the reader staggering under a ridiculous tower of hardcovers, her face warped with a look of sheer mania. All that happens in the video is the host stands in front of the camera, holding up one book after another and professing the orgiastic thrill of possibly getting around to reading some of them. Look, I like buying books, too, and I like having a good number of them in my home, but at some point it does become collecting for the sake of collecting. And I know collecting is a valid (if pointless) hobby. And I'm glad people are out there keeping bookstores in business. But come on. No one cares how many books you buy.
- "Shelf tours" - The host gives a tour of his bookshelves. This is, within the community, often referred to as "shelf porn." I like a well-stocked book shelf as much as the next chap, but do I really care what some nerd's personal collection looks like? No--not unless I'm stuck at a social event at the house of someone I hate but they happen to have a lot of good books to look at. The Booktubers, though, they take it too far. Sometimes they'll post a video just to announce they've acquired a new shelf or two, then show off the empty fixtures as if somebody in the world gives a damn. Sometimes they'll post a video to inform you they've rearranged the books on the shelves--now by color instead of ABC order! Now with the occasional stack of books lying on their backs, all artsy-fartsy! More than one idiot describes the struggle of purchasing just the right editions of books so that they are all the same height.
- "Challenges" - Again, the focus is the size of the reader's collection, not the content of the books. In a "challenge" video, the host goes on a scavenger hunt through her own bookshelves. The implicit boast is that the Booktuber's collection is so vast, you can name anything under the sun and they will have a book in which that thing is featured. "Oh, now I've got to find a young adult novel with a love triangle! This will be hard! OK, now it says find a young adult novel that is a dystopia! How can they make this challenge so difficult!" That's the other thing, too: all these people read is young adult literature. Some of it's good, I grant you, but there are good books out there for children and adults, too.
- Unrelatable emotional investment - On the rare occasion that a Booktuber actually talks about a book as a story and not as a collector's item, he will gush about it in a way that makes you question his mental stability. "This book BA-ROKE me" is a common refrain, as is "This book just SHATTERED me." I guess I can't fault this too much: heightened empathy for fictional characters may be an advanced brain feature I lack. Still, the purported heartbreak experienced by a hyperventilating Booktuber is alien to me. First off, even movies don't make me cry, and they have the advantage of evocative visuals and music. I think I have cried for exactly one movie, and it wasn't even Avengers: Infinity War.1 I have never cried for a book in my life. The closest was probably Where the Red Fern Grows in sixth grade, when I lay there in bed thinking "that was pretty sad" for about five minutes and then probably went back to perusing my Lego catalogs. More recently, A Man Called Ove got me to pause and gaze into the distance with a pensive look on my face for about thirty seconds, sniff once, and then get on with my life.
- Speak in acronyms all the time - This is really a thing in all reading communities, not just Facebook ones. There are a few acronyms you need to be familiar with if you'd like to know what the hell people are talking about.
- TBR - To Be Read. All book lovers kvetch about their ever-growing "TBR piles." Fine, but here's the thing about TBR piles: if you're as much of a book lover as you say, your "TBR pile" should be virtually infinite. Speaking for myself, there is no way I could ever read all the books I want to read, even if no new books were published from this moment on. So broadcasting one's TBR woes is futile at best.
- DNF - Did Not Finish. Again--there's nothing inherently wrong with acronyms; they do serve a purpose. But why this one? Like TBR, many community members gripe about their "DNF piles," but some go further and use DNF as a transitive verb, as in, "I am not digging this book so far; should I DNF it?" Or: "I really wanted to like this book, but I DNF'd it." You did not finished it? Like, double past-tense? GAB me. Gimme A Break. To me.
- The acronym for any book title longer, apparently, than two words - This Facebook community I joined is obsessed with something called ACOTAR. After reading for the fortieth time about a member having ACOTAR in either her TBR or her DNF pile, I finally Googled it. It's a book called A Court of Thorns and Roses. Kind of a mouthful, I admit, but you can look just plain stupid speaking in acronyms all the time, particularly when a series has equally-wordy sequels: ACOMAF, ACOWAR, and ACOFAS. "I thought ACOTAR was slow, but ACOMAF caught my interest, and by ACOWAR I was hooked--ACOFAS can't come out soon enough!" Oh, do shut up. Just say Book 1 and Book 2, etc., if you want to shorten it. The worst are these three YouTubers I sometimes watch. They have individual channels, but they are real-life besties and sometimes do collabs, which are the worst. In them, they quiz each other on young adult literature, using acronyms orally. One of them will bring up TFIOS (pronounced TIFFY-o's), and the other two morons will actually know what she's talking about. (If you want to know, it's The Fault in Our Stars, one of the worst books I've ever read.)
- TBR - To Be Read. All book lovers kvetch about their ever-growing "TBR piles." Fine, but here's the thing about TBR piles: if you're as much of a book lover as you say, your "TBR pile" should be virtually infinite. Speaking for myself, there is no way I could ever read all the books I want to read, even if no new books were published from this moment on. So broadcasting one's TBR woes is futile at best.
- Totally staged photographs of their reading areas - I don't know why, but many readers like to post first-person views of the books they are about to read and the objects in their vicinity. These contrived shots are guaranteed to have either wine or tea in them. Congrats on being literate and having access to beverages, I guess.
- Asking for inane advice: More often than not, the supplicant wishes to know how to get out of a reading slump, i.e. a time in which they aren't getting much reading done. I admit this is a legitimate concern; I go through unpredictable periods where I get either a lot of reading done or none at all. It's almost a creative barrier, like writer's block. The thing is, there is no rhyme or reason to it, and as such I believe there is no remedy. So stop asking. I mean, what do you want me to say? "Read better"? "Try harder"?
- Vague demands for recommendations - Often, a community member will post something like "Spam me with recommendations for adventure stories." Um, how about get bent, madam? You think I'm just waiting around for the privilege of giving you book recommendations? Figure it out for yourself. To the community's credit, these thoughtless posts rarely get many replies--yet the imperious demands keep coming.
- Idiotic polls - "What should I read next? Vote on one of the following five choices!" I'm sorry, did I give you the impression I cared? I don't give a shit what you read. Here's a copy of Tiffy-o's for you.
1 wasn't even Avengers: Infinity War: Actually, it was Twelve Years a Slave, and a handful of others have got me a little misty-eyed, but let me talk about Avengers for a second. When I saw it in the theater, there were two or three college girls in my row who absolutely LOST IT when everybody started dying. I don't want to say "it's just a comic book movie," but...it's just a comic book movie. Not Bucky, not Groot, not even a whimpering Peter Parker was enough to stir my stone-cold heart. But the girls, you'd have thought they'd just seen their own families butchered. I wanted to smack the lot of them and say, "Get a grip, you ninnies!"