The dark side of blurbs.

Author blurbs, no. I won't pay attention to an author blurb unless I know enough about the author to know they won't blurb a book they didn't genuinely like (which means it's an author I like enough that I follow their personal online presence enough to have heard them talk about blurbing, or to have gathered enough about their general attitude that I can make an educated guess about it). I know it happens that authors do, for any number of reasons. So I am inherently very skeptical of them. I wish it was not so, but alas.

I have had this experience with booksellers whose opinions I otherwise trust. I had a book, an epic fantasy which was a Big Excited Thing and has since been largely forgotten (the final book in the trilogy didn't even get published, and not because the author didn't actually write it) which was hyped up to me as being Utterly Fantastic and Full Of All The Stuff I Loved In The Books I Have Been Buying from this bookseller.

Normally, this is what I love about independent booksellers. They get to know you. They get to know your taste. They will hold things aside for you, they will recommend things. It's fantastic.

I hated this book.

HATED. IT. And hated it in ways that made me sit and scratch my head and wonder what the hades the educated woman who otherwise knew my tastes, was a genre reader and thus not snobbish about it (and giving me the "here, this is crap! you like crap!" recommendation) was drinking when she read it.

It was trite.
It was poorly written.
It was sterotyped.
It was a badly written Mary Sue.
The main characters were both insufferable. I wanted to drown the triangulated Sort of Evil But Not Really love interest. I ended up rooting for the villain. This was sad, because he was stupid.

I'm really, really intolerant of dumb villains. They don't give me any kind of threat; if your hero is a shining bastion of uber-powered goodness and probably marshmallow filling, and a super genius, and whatever, and your villain is a bumbling, cackling caricature of evil that seems like he escaped from a Three Stoges film, then your book may get thrown across the room with great force. So you can imagine how much I hated the other characters if I was rooting for Larry the EEEEVIL and his henchmen.

To this day I am not sure why I finished that book. I don't know. I paid money for it; I didn't have a lot of money. And it was kind of like a train wreck. It was horrid and I couldn't turn my head away.

I ended up giving it to a friend. "I think you would REALLY, REALLY like this." I assured her. It was a "Here, you like crap! This is crap!" recommendation.

She LOVED it and so far as I know is still angry that the planned trilogy was never finished.

...

Sometimes I think I am a bad friend.

I recommend books for people like my true calling is to be a librarian, and I tend to base those recs on the person. I have a few coworkers who love books I just don't get, but sometimes I'll read a book I don't care for and know it will be right up their alley, so I hand it over.

You're not a bad friend. You just recognize your tastes are different than your friend's.

I always feel bad about the "here, this is complete crap. You like this kind of complete crap!" recommendation, and I feel like I make a lot of those (to be fair, I probably do make more "this is FANTASTIC you will LOVE this" recommendations.) I always feel like I'm judging.

Back in the Dark Ages when I worked in an office, I'd get the "here, this is complete crap. You like this kind of complete crap!" recommendations all the time. I read weird-looking books (F&SF and mysteries) during my lunch break, therefore I must want to read... Flowers in the Attic, I think it was. Yeesh.

I read blurbs, but I take them with a grain of salt. Besides, my favorite author's tastes may not accord with mine anyway.

I once got handed the D&D trilogy thing from Weis and Hickman, by a friend who was apparently under the impression that the tropes in it were... new. and fresh. -_-

I mean, yes, they're competently done, and Kender were a pretty sharp break from Hobbits, and gully dwarves (*giggle*), but the tropes... the tropes... the creaking ancient tropes... *cry*

My husband and I have an ongoing war with that series.

He keeps trying to get me to read it and I keep failing to get past the second or third chapter.

Intellectually he gets his insane love for that series is based entirely on the fact that he read it when he was twelve, and that trying to hand it to me at thirty-two is perhaps far, far too late, but he loves it too much to give up trying to get me to love it and I love him to much to go "Honey, give it a rest."

Intellectually he gets his insane love for that series is based entirely on the fact that he read it when he was twelve, and that trying to hand it to me at thirty-two is perhaps far, far too late [...]

Ohai conversation I've had a bunch of times. I've even started having this conversation *with myself*, as I go back and try to re-read treasured favorites from childhood. The D&D books were one of the first to go in the Great Purge, because I tried to re-read them and it was depressing. (I think I still have the original trilogy, because it actually held up, but I had about 20 of the addons, and they're all gone now.)

It will not amaze you to learn that my husband got rid of all the others but kept the first trilogy. Which he keeps chasing me with.

Serious answer: skip ahead till you get gully dwarves. Gully dwarves and Raistlin, interacting, are the high points. (That, and the crazy old mage about to cast A Spell To Get Us Out Of The Cage. *snicker*) Everything else is pretty much Standard Fantasy Trope, so you don't actually have to read the back stuff to know what's going on, half the time.

I was that bookseller! Well, OK, probably not the very same bookseller, but matching people with the books they would love was one of my most frequent (and most favorite) parts of my job.
And it's a sober and disappointing event when the match goes bad. Not only does the reader lose confidence in the recommend-er (you can be right a hundred times, but only wrong once) but it makes it challenging to figure out the disconnect, and know what to suggest next time.

On a side topic, if that author is still active, self-publishing, especially ebook publishing, has become straightforward enough that they may find success releasing the third book themselves. And your friend would probably be interested.

You know, I hadn't considered that. I'll suggest she checks (or maybe I'll do it for her.)

And it does appear that if the publisher doesn't publish the last book before the rights go out the author will be e-publishing it. Worth knowing!

I haven't seen it on bookshelves in ages. So I think you're probably safe. :)

I get the point on "sometimes we like crap!" bit. There's a fair amount of fairly awful stuff I love because it's kitchy hilarious (maybe on purpose but it's better when it's not). Like Las Vegas. How can you NOT LOVE A CITY THAT'S OUT IN THE DESERT WHERE NO CITY SHOULD BE, RUNS ON SIN AND GAMBLING, AND PRETENDS TO BE *OTHER CITIES*??? I just don't get how anyone could think this could possibly be a bad thing. My husband thinks it's a bad thing: he refuses to set foot in the city on principle.

And one of my best friends and I trade "here's something REALLY weird" things. I am currently winning because I found the pigeon dating sim.

...Pigeon dating sim?! I...whaa...buh?

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=67529

http://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/hatoful-boyfriend-the-search-for-fat-birds-good-end.1028/

You're welcome. Or I'm very, very sorry. I mean, hard to say.

I can't decide if this is the best thing I've ever seen or the worst.
Half my brain is yelling NOT OKAY NOT OKAY and the other is rubbing its hands together in sadistic glee.

Thanks? I think?

You're welcomeish?

It was a "Here, you like crap! This is crap!" recommendation...Sometimes I think I am a bad friend.

Well, there's "You like crap, this is crap," and there's "I hate bananas, you like bananas, this has bananas." If somebody hands me a crap smoothie, I'm not going to recommend it to anybody. If I get a banana-strawberry-pineapple smoothie, I'll give it to my mom.

I suppose that's a better way of putting it. It's not like I think *less* of my friends for their weird "transsexual transyvanian vampire-werewolf hybrid meets Lord of the Rings as staged by David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust era"* fetishes. I just know that when I see a Catholic schoolgirl who's been possessed by the soul of some lesser demon teaming up with a rogue priest to fight crime and have sultry evening flirt sessions I need to pass that puppy off to someone who's eyes are not going to roll so far back they're going to get a view of their cerebellum at a mere glance at the cover.

*Actually I now think this sounds fantastic. I would probably read this!

I prefer juicy hamburgers with real meat and cheese.

Sometimes I am in the mood for a burger made with meat that is already mostly chewed, and "cheese food". It is not high quality, but it had better not be tainted or contain foreign objects.

And thus certain kinds of crap reading material.