I have to say, I notice a lot of trends in the online book community; and one of those is that I see a lot of the exact same books hauled by almost everyone in the community. I also hear a lot of, "Everyone has read this book." And I have NOT bought or read 90 per cent of those books. I can't help but wonder, how much of this trend is because "everyone has them"? Can we attribute this to a sort of silent peer pressure?
Personally, I have always deliberately avoided books that "everybody" is talking about. I almost missed out on Harry Potter and the Hunger Games because of this- which would have been really dumb, But I have never grown out of my rebellious, non-conformist stubbornness and I approach wildly popular, overhyped books/series in one of two ways: I either wait for the hype to die down and then read the book(s), or I simply refuse to acknowledge their existence.
It seems that every "BookTuber" I see has identical collections of books and discusses the same titles. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; and while I have no doubt that these books are great; I can't help wondering how many other really great books are being overlooked and languishing in obscurity simply because they didn't make the "Popular" list.
Another thing I hear a lot is the phrase, "Well, I bought this book, but everyone hates it so I'm not going to read it." What? Really? Who is this mysterious "everyone" that has so much influence on the bookish community? And do they deserve so much power?
Read whatever you like, whatever makes you happy; and please don't feel pressure to own, read, enjoy or dislike books because of other people.
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