Posted by: kaite stover
Just saw a blog post over at Publisher’s Weekly Shelftalker that made me hoot.
Members of a book group read different books and then swap the most promising titles amongst themselves after discussing. Books that fall into the “five-hours-of-my-life-I’ll-never-get-back” catetory are dismissed from the group in a ceremony reminiscent of first grade.
The offending/boring/pedantic tome is marched into a corner, cover first, and left there to think about its crimes against readers, if not literature. Think I’m joking? You need to see this.
Comments on the post were typical. Lots of sighs of relief from readers who sheepishly admitted hating a title that everyone else loved, righteous defense of any words put to paper and slid between covers as “redeemable simply for being printed,” and jokesters who thought up new “punishments” for “bad books.”
One responder recycles books she finds unworthy. Another thinks we need “the literary equivalent of rottentomatoes.com.” And one poorly received title wound up as potting soil filler. Ouch! Talk about getting buried by your critics. Nyuk, nyuk. Lame jokes aside, anyone have any other ways to let a book know it’s been bad, very bad, and it should just wait til Dad gets home?
