Everyone's entitled to their opinion but I honestly hate most literary discourse online

I have been on both sides of this, and have learned that books are subjective and generally meant for different audiences.

Like, look at the most liked review of 'The Road' on GoodReads atm

I met a person who hated the Road. Having no dog in this fight, what I gathered from him was - the story of The Road is already well-known to people within sci-fi community as there are tonnes of books that had an exact same storyline, plot-twists and tropes.

However, The Road was meant for newbies, for whom these plot-twists and religious metaphor was brand new. So you can easily see the clash here.

It is kinda like Eragon. For newbies, it was a brand new story. But for older folks, it felt like a copy of Star Wars scene to scene, and it was criticized for being hacky.


On the other side of this, I have liked some YA-books which simplify complex social issues, about sex, race, trauma etc. in very simple, easy-to-understand ways with teenage drama. However, you find adults pointing out how XYZ in the book is oversimplified and not nuanced enough, and I'm like My brother-in-goodreads, this is a teen book meant for high-school kids, nobody wants to include your sociology lessons here.

/r/books Thread