Are you ready for another Weekend Ramblings a la KJ?!
Well then... let's get ready to raaaaammmmmbbbbbllllleeeee!!!!!
This week's rambling questions are...
*What do you do when you come across content in a book that you are not comfortable with? Do you skip over it and keep reading or do you stop and move on to another book? What if the content didn't show up until you were about 75% into the book? What do you do then?*
The first book was part of my 2017 reading challenge. I got about 58% into the book and finally just said.. I'm done! I do have to say that I skimmed through the book to see if my suspicions for the bad guy was correct and stumbled upon more content that I didn't really care to read about. But I found out I was right about one part but not the other. While I'm curious to see what happens, I am not curious enough to pick up the rest of the books in the series.
I only got about 5% into one of the other books I started this week before the author had a 14 year old character drop the F-bomb. That book got sent right back to Amazon. Thank you Kindle Unlimited! I didn't waste any of my money on that author. Well... maybe a couple of pennies. Lol.
The last book I ended up doing lots and lots of research on before I even started. Why? Because the previous two books were duds and the page count was 674 pages. Six. Hundred. And. Seventy. Four. Pages! That's just crazy! Needless to say an honest reviewer informed future readers that there was a lot of language including several F-bombs. Thank you Ms. Reviewer for your honesty!
If you couldn't tell the F-bomb is an absolute no go for me. I will stop reading any book, no matter how far I am into it, if I see that word. Yes, I know people use it all the time... I hear it constantly. But that doesn't mean that I have to put up with it in the books that I read.
And the sad thing about all three of the above books is that they were all in the Young Adult genre. To me that mean teenagers and it just ticks me off! While I am not a mom, I am an auntie to 16 AMAZING nieces and nephews. I would not want any of them reading any of the above books. I honestly don't understand why some of the content is needed in said books. It's really sad that some authors and/or publishers feel the need to add this content. I would love to share my passion for reading with all my nieces and nephews but it's really hard when I can't even trust that a Young Adult book is going to be clean. :(
Some of you might think I am going a bit overboard and you might be right. I am not a mom and do not have to face the challenges of raising teenagers but I would think that books should be a safe place for them to escape all the negativity that is out there. Not a place that fills their head with more negativity and bad ideas on what they could be doing as teenagers. Society is already bad enough in my opinion.
And on that note, I better stop. I could go on and on when it comes to content in books. Haha.
Now it's time to hear from you! What are your thoughts on the above questions? Inquiring minds want to know! :)
I'm definitely with you KJ! It's too bad they ruin good books with bad words, like you said especially with young adult books!!!!! Grrrrrr
ReplyDeleteIt's not just the bad words. Some of them don't bother me. There are times I don't even notice the hecks and dangs. But there are a few that I just won't stand for.
DeleteIn one of the above mentioned books there was talk of sex, people laying in nothing but sheets talking to a teenager, and the rape of a 14 year old girl... who never told ANYONE that she was raped. Really? Why?! Why put that in there and have her NOT say anything?! Grrrrr. You think I want my 15 year old niece reading about that? Nope! Sorry! I was beyond irritated at that point.
I guess it depends on how far into the book and what the content is. One book comes to mind, it was squeaky clean for 95% of the book and then had a sex scene (that I skipped) at the end. By then I was too invested in the story to just stop.
ReplyDeleteOther times if I can tell early in that it's not going to be clean I'll stop.
Books NEED content ratings. People would have a better reading experience overall if they knew what they were getting ahead of time.
That's happened to me as well. I got like 80% into a book and BAM! A sex scene. I also skipped over it. I was invested in the characters and I wanted to see how things ended. The book was the start of a series that followed different characters but I didn't continue on with it. If it's in the first book, it's going to be in the rest of the books. *le sigh*
DeleteAnd I agree 110%! Books really DO need content ratings! I was extremely grateful to the honest reviewer or else I would not have known about the F-bombs throughout the book. The majority of the reviews just raved about how amazing the book was and gave nothing on the content. Thankfully that was another KU book that I had grabbed. It got returned without even opening the book.
One thing I really love is authors who will take their steamy books and turn them into clean books for readers like us to enjoy. I will definitely support the authors clean books. I wish more would do it. :)
If I'm really invested in the story, I'll just skip scenes to find out what happens. But if there's way too much language or violence or sex scenes or whatever and I don't really care what happens, I put it down, especially if I'm in the first 25%.
ReplyDelete