Investigated – Book Recommendations

Call me weird, but I have mixed feelings about book recommendations. On one had they are a great way to learn about new books. On the other, they are a great way to annoy me…

The Good

A lot of the books I’ve read because of someone’s recommendation, I would never have read without it. Usually either because I have never heard of that particular book before or because I needed a push to read it and the recommendation was it. I have discovered a lot of really good books this way. Without recommendations from other people I would never have read some of the books that are now some of my favorites. Take If I Stay for example. I tried to read it once, but just could not get into into it. But because my friend loved it and kept recommending it to me, I gave it another try and loved it. Now it’s one of few books that manages to stay on my favorites shelf even after 10 rereads.

I also like giving book recs to other people. I take pride in helping others discover new books. I see it as a way to share my love for a book by sharing it with others. Especially the books that tend to fly under the radar either in the blogging world or in real life.

The Bad

Honestly when I get book recommendations and end up reading that book, I always feel pressured to like the book. It’s like an unspoken rule that if you take a recommendation from someone, you have to at least somewhat like it. But what if you don’t. What do you tell the person that keeps pestering you about it and saying things like “Wasn’t it great?!?” (and yes, I’m very guilty of doing that, sorry guys) when you thought it was horrible? I hate being put in that position and I hate lying about my feelings about a particular book. I also feel super bad when I give a recommendation to someone and they don’t like it. First of all it’s upsetting they don’t like one of the books I love. And then I feel bad for gushing about it over and over again thinking the other person enjoyed just as much as I did. Can I say embarrassing?

Recs also get on my nerves when they come from people who feel they are well read (in YA). It makes me want to pull my hair out when people want to recommend books like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner to me. Now there’s nothing wrong with any of those books, in fact I liked all of them. The problem is the so called helpful recommendations are the cause of the surge of popularity the books are facing because of their respective movies. And at this point I honestly could care less about how Peeta and Katniss are perfect for each other when I read the book three years ago. Because please, your recommendation is a bit outdated… I read it years ago, told you to read it and you disregarded my advice.

And I just realized I already wrote a post about book recommendations. Oh, well whatever. This is the more mature version…

What do you think?
How do you feel about book recommendations?
Love them or hate them?

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