I have always “tried” to be alternative, once I realized that I have the innate tendency to like “less popular” things, including hobbies, people and character traits, not just things. Or at least I surfed the wave of my nerdy side, without forcing to like popular things that I would have never liked. And at the same time, it’s nice to admit that sometimes I luckily fit into some of the “boxes of popular interests”. Despite this last thing, I have always felt lonely in this hobby that I share that is reading, so once a book became (or becomes) popular and the plot met/meets my tastebuds (or the anticipation I had on my liking of it) I was/am more than happy to have somebody to finally discuss books with! That’s why I am here on booktube/other social media to discuss bookish stuff 🤭 anyway sometimes I just feel annoyed by “popular books” not actually because I think they’re automatically bad or great titles, but rather because I feel like there’s a bit less diversity. And that’s when I have to be my own good-books-scout 😬
You know, one of the hard things about liking the less popular stuff is you can’t just go based on rave reviews. It’s really helpful to find other people with similar taste.
I can only recall 2 cases of people calling book series overrated. One was Lord of the Rings by some author that I dont like. The others were some people that say Eragon is overrated because the movie sucks.
I too used to do that thing where I didn’t like things because they were popular. I think I’ve retained a little of it in adulthood haha. I like a lot of really popular series, but there’s a few books I’ve tried that are insanely popular that I think are just poorly written and bad. That still annoys me 😅 but people are going to like what they’re going to like. When I meet people who like some of those books I try to kindly slide in recommendations for books of similar nature that I think are way better haha.
Music is the same way. Many of the early figures in jazz, including Scott Joplin, James P. Johnson, and George Gershwin, aspired to be serious composers of operas and symphonies, and didn’t like being famous for popular stuff. Several chairs of big university music departments who you’ve never heard of started as band leaders, and worked their way into academia because they thought it was more legitimate. Mozart wanted to be known for his masses and not the Magic Flute. Tchaikovsky hated how popular the Nutcracker was. Saint-Saens thought it was silly how popular the Carnival of Animals was. I think this line of thinking goes pretty deep.
Elitism is really just a human being problem, not specific to any one field or interest. But I’m sure it’s more prevalent in anything considered scholarly or academic. And it’s not just the classical musicians, I’ve seen the attitude in rock and metal circles😂
I'm not sure about books, but the books that gets turned into movies (the movies in particular) and the serieses/film serieses that get supper popular here are basically very horney but not horney enough to get censored stuff... yes Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings... even StarWars, didn't gain that much popularity here as much as Twilight, 50 shades of grey, True Blood and Vampire Diaries did! ...I might be a little biased cos I love Vampires and three of those are Vampire stories that are over sexualized and that's not what I look for in Vampire movies but oh well, that's why I never even tried to look into Game of Thrones hehehe
That’s a good point, and I think that type of content is one of the things that adds mass appeal instead of niche appeal. I read the first Game of Thrones book and did not continue…
I have always “tried” to be alternative, once I realized that I have the innate tendency to like “less popular” things, including hobbies, people and character traits, not just things. Or at least I surfed the wave of my nerdy side, without forcing to like popular things that I would have never liked. And at the same time, it’s nice to admit that sometimes I luckily fit into some of the “boxes of popular interests”. Despite this last thing, I have always felt lonely in this hobby that I share that is reading, so once a book became (or becomes) popular and the plot met/meets my tastebuds (or the anticipation I had on my liking of it) I was/am more than happy to have somebody to finally discuss books with! That’s why I am here on booktube/other social media to discuss bookish stuff 🤭 anyway sometimes I just feel annoyed by “popular books” not actually because I think they’re automatically bad or great titles, but rather because I feel like there’s a bit less diversity. And that’s when I have to be my own good-books-scout 😬
You know, one of the hard things about liking the less popular stuff is you can’t just go based on rave reviews.
It’s really helpful to find other people with similar taste.
I can only recall 2 cases of people calling book series overrated. One was Lord of the Rings by some author that I dont like. The others were some people that say Eragon is overrated because the movie sucks.
Those could both be examples of books being judged by their movie franchise.
I too used to do that thing where I didn’t like things because they were popular. I think I’ve retained a little of it in adulthood haha. I like a lot of really popular series, but there’s a few books I’ve tried that are insanely popular that I think are just poorly written and bad. That still annoys me 😅 but people are going to like what they’re going to like.
When I meet people who like some of those books I try to kindly slide in recommendations for books of similar nature that I think are way better haha.
Why are so many of us like that?😂
Music is the same way. Many of the early figures in jazz, including Scott Joplin, James P. Johnson, and George Gershwin, aspired to be serious composers of operas and symphonies, and didn’t like being famous for popular stuff.
Several chairs of big university music departments who you’ve never heard of started as band leaders, and worked their way into academia because they thought it was more legitimate.
Mozart wanted to be known for his masses and not the Magic Flute.
Tchaikovsky hated how popular the Nutcracker was.
Saint-Saens thought it was silly how popular the Carnival of Animals was.
I think this line of thinking goes pretty deep.
Elitism is really just a human being problem, not specific to any one field or interest. But I’m sure it’s more prevalent in anything considered scholarly or academic.
And it’s not just the classical musicians, I’ve seen the attitude in rock and metal circles😂
I'm not sure about books, but the books that gets turned into movies (the movies in particular) and the serieses/film serieses that get supper popular here are basically very horney but not horney enough to get censored stuff... yes Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings... even StarWars, didn't gain that much popularity here as much as Twilight, 50 shades of grey, True Blood and Vampire Diaries did! ...I might be a little biased cos I love Vampires and three of those are Vampire stories that are over sexualized and that's not what I look for in Vampire movies but oh well, that's why I never even tried to look into Game of Thrones hehehe
That’s a good point, and I think that type of content is one of the things that adds mass appeal instead of niche appeal.
I read the first Game of Thrones book and did not continue…