chat

I've been into a few bookstores while wandering around and have seen exciting novel interesting books in the genres of horror, sci fi, and even fantasy (a genre I thought had been self preferentially done to death). And it's cool! I want to read these! But I am no longer a crippled child with ample time to read, so if I'm going to spend money on books and then spend a bunch of time reading I damn well want it to be worthwhile. This has led to me snapping pics of books so that I can download them instead later and give them the old up-to-3-chapters-to-hook-me try, and then at that point if I like it I may as well just read the eBook and not buy the book at all. Not a terrible way to do it tbh! But there's still the time investment problem and there's still the problem of the books or plots getting terrible later as the author injects more of their terrible worldview into the mix.

My issue is that when I'm reading a blurb on a book from an author I don't already know is good, I have no way to know if it's going to be interesting, innovative, and good, or if it's going to be mediocre slop. I have no idea if it's going to be full of shitlib tokenism and selective peace-policing. I have no idea if it's full of anticommunist brainworms or not. I have no idea if this is a tropy snorefest.

Googling for reviews online is surprisingly not as helpful as I'd have expected! I suppose I could turn to social media to see what people in general think, but the credibility is immediately undermined by how vapid and superficial BookTok's taste is (does it tokenize minorities? Then it MUST be good even if everything else about the book is dogshit!) or by how much Reddit loves Brandon Sanderson (have you ever heard of Mistborn it's the best series ever). I can't take these sources seriously for recommendations anymore because they've burned me.