Passive Reading

I have a few rants stored up from my interactions with those people at Goodreads. This one I touched upon on Saturday, and I knew I wanted to rant about it but I couldn't for the life of me remember the topic even as I was posting it (oh, brain damage, you tease!).

Remember how I said when I read a sentence as simple as someone going to the shops my brain will immediately start alongside my reading some backstory and running commentary and speculation (and I'll be judging grammar and use of language, but I didn't say that before) and that I get annoyed by simply being told something is good and bad without justification for why (I'm surprisingly okay once I get a 'because') well, I wanted to expand on that.

I consider these kinds of comments the antithesis of what I do, and I call it passive reading. It's not like passive smoking whereby someone else makes you smoke though you don't want to (thanks for sharing your cancer), but actually passive, that kind of blankness that makes me wonder if there's anything there.

Admittedly, most of these conversations happen when discussing 50 Shades of Grey, so it's not the best source material, but since the whole concept of 50 completely baffles me, I need logical thought behind all those pro- arguments. But what I get back is 'I liked it because it was good'.

What was good? The storyline? The storyline is pretty standard romance. The characters? Oh, please read Jenny Armintrout's blog, and Cassandra Parkin's ebooks. The kinky BDSM aspect? When you actually find BDSM and not abuse, hit me up, we'll discuss source material and hopefully you'll understand that kink is not a reward/punishment system for general behaviour. The language? Again, The blog and ebook. Jenny points out that the grammar is so bad, at one key kinky scene, it reads like Ana is giving Christian's father a handjob at a benefit. And "down there" makes me think of her feet. In Australia.

But I'm not here to trash 50, I could never be as hilarious as Cassandra or Jenny for a start, but that is basically my reaction to any book where I get that as an argument. Even books I like, I want to discuss bigger things. Like, I read Divergent and Insurgent recently, and the post I put up on Goodreads? It was about whether other readers considered divergency a nature/nurture development, and whether people sometimes elected to become Abnegation precisely because that's where the power of government is (considering the fact that Tris' dad was Erudite, I'd say that it was an educated guess that he manipulated the system, and then when his children grew up they both had a tendency towards Erudite, like him, as well as Abnegation, where they grew up. If you have no idea what I'm going on about, read the books! It's like a post-apocalyptic version of the hunger games, but everyone dies, not just kids. I actually don't like the Hunger Games comparison, but it's probably the most popular book that's similar) and I regularly speculate with others about what will happen in The Fall Of Five, from the Lorien stories (we have some exciting theories about the beginning of Setrakus Ra and his involvement in Mogodorians trying to eliminate the Loriens and Science Fiction is amazing). I love breaking books apart (not literally, sacrilege!) and exploring them with other people, I want them to show me an emphasis I hadn't considered before. It's like reading a whole other book.

I don't get why other people don't do that. How they can read a book and be like 'well, I got a warm, fuzzy feeling so I like this book' and that be it. Even at the base of it, be like 'I liked the main protagonist for his humour and tenacity.' Okay, you don't want to sound like a prick, I clearly have no problem with it, I'll rephrase; 'I liked the main guy because he was funny and even when life sucked he tried hard to live the way he thought was right.' I respect that, because I know why you liked it, it shows me a little bit about you, a new little bit of the book, and makes me consider the author in a whole new way.

I hope, should I ever get published, or self-publish, and people email/tweet/comment on here (no hints, or anything) that I get "becauses" whatever people think of the book ("It's shit because you named your main character Lambrini, are you taking the piss?" - yes, yes I did. I love it, I will not change it. And yes, at first, I was taking the piss, but it suits her, they had that tagline 'girls just wanna have fun' which is now 'girls just wanna be unique' and it shortens to Lamb which has connotations of innocence and a need for protection, and I bet you can now tell one theme in my book, just from me breaking down her name. And hopefully, you get why I'm not ever changing it. But I digress), it's just polite. I mean, I replied to Jay Asher's message thanking me for panning his non-book, saying why I loved his work and that my original post was me being generous for loving his other works so much. He didn't reply back so maybe I was a little breathy-fan-girl in my approach (okay, I was totally a breathy-fan-girl. Like when I served one of 5ive at work) but I still like to think he appreciated my opinion on his actual work.

Just ... just respect the amount of effort and alcohol a writer has gone through to write and rewrite and edit and consider things like prophetic phallacy and alternate vocabulary that works in colloquial speech *coughs*chagrin*coughs*Meyer*coughs* and give them something back. Give the other readers something to bounce off.

Reading is not a passive sport. You don't stare at a page like you can stare at a TV screen and still have the action go by, you have to engage. And if you have something to say but can't articulate it? Think for a few minutes before putting something online. The internet doesn't have an opening time, you know?