Harrison Carcione: "Dear Carmen Maria Machado: A Lot of Things About Books Make Me Angry"

Dear Carmen Maria Machado: A Lot of Things About Books Make Me Angry

By Harrison Carcione

            The school I go to has the tendency to suck up all my free time and as a result it has been roughly three years since the last time I picked up a book of my own accord. Though the following information is not recent, I believe that it is still relevant.

            When I read for fun I normally pick books that are similar to previous books that I’ve enjoyed, have recently gained a lot of popularity, or are suggested by my friends or my librarian. It’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover, and that is true of the content, but whether or not I actually read the book is dependent on the cover. I’m not going to read a book whose cover, title, or back cover (that thing that gives a gist of what the book is about) doesn’t interest me.

            When it comes to things that authors can do to ruin a book for me there are a lot. I guess I would say the first would be trying to make the characters too relatable. There comes a point where some characters’ actions and dialogue divulge too far from reasonable (even in speculative fiction genres). I’d say one of the things that I loathe is when an author tries to make a character edgy with the goal of relating to the angsty teenage reader. A lot of times this doesn’t work and it just separates me further from the character and the story. One of the things that goes along with this is when characters swear at awkward times in the story. When a character curses I want it to be part of who they are. If it feels forced then I don’t want to read it. Almost everything that makes me stop reading a novel can be summarized by the twitter: @TypicalYAHero. It’s a collection of cliche content that is found in YA literature. I’m starting to transition into more non-YA literature, but cliche content still exists and that’s normally something that turns me away the fastest.

            Why I stop reading novels is for a few different reasons. One is that the author uses too much of the aforementioned “sins”. Another is if the book becomes monotonous. The story takes too long to shuffle through its contents (it has too much fluff). How the author writes is also really important. If it's hard to read then I close the book and never come back to it.

            I hope this information helps (even if just a little).

Sincerely,

Harrison Carcione