First off, I liked the Austen reference :)

Secondly, I can understand wholly why fantasy fans are so reactive against PNR, even if I dont agree with it. We read Fantasy because we love how these worlds and characters and stories come alive in our imagination, and so naturally we are pretty attached and associated with our favourite books. How could we not be? Especially with fantasy which seems to encourage us to invest copius amounts of time into the huge epic stories amd theorising on the how the long running series will end. So of course we become deeply attached to what we do like, and when what we like is compared to something we dislike... its going to cause resistance. Look at what happened with Harry Potter and Twilight. People kept comparing the two, and so when fans read Twilight and hated it, all we could think was:"how DARE theeeey vompare the wonderful, awe inspiring masterpiece that is Harry Potter to this... abomination!" Of course many people were just happy to read another series to enjoy, but we arent talking about them, we are talking about perhaps why people reclact against things like this. I dont think it is the right way to behave, but its justmy thoughts on why this happens.

Thirdly and lastly, I think Neil Gaiman said it best (as if he could say it any other way!): "Well meaning adults can destroy a childs love of reading. Stop them reading what they enjoy and we will create a generation of children who thinks it's uncool to read. We need to get children onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will bring them up, rung by rung, into literacy." It applies to adults and reading fans too. What do we have to gain by discouraging anyones preferred books? So what you dont like the same books, we can gush to each other all the same about why we think they are great!