Confessions of a Literary Addict

I feel like this is an extremely vague thing to ask, but that stems from my difficulty portraying what it is I’m trying to say.

To clarify (kind of): books seemingly without a single negative review, no matter how many pages of reviews you tab through on Goodreads. To the point where actually filtering for the specific level of review via star rating makes it easier.

Not many of these exist, I know, but there are a scant few out there that seem to get nothing but absolutely glowing reviews without a single point of negativity to give. When it comes to these, even if I don’t want to be, I get extremely skeptical.

I won’t say exactly which book I’m talking about, because I don’t know the kind of reaction it’ll give–which, now, makes me wonder if that fact contributes to others unwilling to give a negative review. When books get endlessly good comments given, I feel the need to dig and scrounge for a single negative thing said. Why? Do I want this book to not actually be all the perfection it seems to be?

I don’t know. Not really, I guess. It’s more like I just can’t believe it and need clarification that there is someone out there who’s not following the crowd, just in case I don’t end up liking it and have to be alone in my standing.

(Unlikely, I know, since we’re not all sheep and we all have different opinions. But, where are those different opinions if everyone loved the book?)

In the end, I supposed I particularly feel the need to find something negative about a book that seems to be perfect simply because I refuse to believe any book out there doesn’t have a single thing wrong with it. Every book has at least one thing wrong, and that thing can be forgivable, but it exists.

Yes, even Harry Potter. Yeah. I fricken’ said it.

(Actually, there are a lot of things wrong with Harry Potter. I still love it, though.)

But, my point is that nothing is perfect, and when people are constantly conveniently skipping over that imperfection, to the point where there doesn’t seem to even be any imperfection, it just drives me to look wildly for that imperfection that MUST exist, even if I won’t be the one to point it out. Because I’m a weenie.

Also, maybe I’m just mean and bitter. That’s a possibility, too.

But, really, a book can’t be perfection. So why does everyone seem to be skipping over it? And why do I feel such a diehard need to find that imperfection? Questions, questions, questions.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to let me know if you feel the same in any sense, because I feel kind of weird admitting it.