That makes sense to me, Bun, and I'd probably find the latter annoying as well.

It makes an enormous difference to me why someone doesn't like a book I like, and how they express it.

I'm pretty much fine with reviews like: while quite well written this book wasn't really to my taste because I prefer more realistic fiction and fewer talking mice.

I am not fine with reviews like; this book is stupid and anybody who likes it hasn't grown up yet. Adults don't read about talking mice.

Two completely different approaches. Once I respect, even if I don't identify with it. Other one makes me want to throw kitchen scraps.

Well, it's not that I don't believe you, Jackie - I just have difficulty understanding it. I guess I'm thinking of some of the over-the-top reactions I've seen around GR. People who become incensed at 4 or 3-star rating, because it doesn't match their own 5-star assessment. Sometimes it seems like "dissed" can encompass a pretty wide range of responses.

It's definitely not rational, but when it's a beloved book, it hurts to see it dissed, Abigail.

Well its a disappointment roughly equivalent to, for example, the bakery being out of prune danish. Or me accidentally ripping my favorite shirt on a nail. Not going to ruin my day unless it was already going south anyway. But still a disappointment for all its a small one.

Like I said, I definitely understand the disappointment of that moment. There's this sense of shared understanding that turns out to have been an illusion. And I agree, Jackie, that it's important to keep the tastes of other readers in mind. I read a LOT of vintage children's fiction that just wouldn't appeal to many of my friends, and it would be rather misguided of me to try to recommend it to them...

But even with friends and fellow readers who share my general taste, there's always the possibility that a given work won't speak to them in quite the way it speaks to me... I just don't see the point of getting too upset about it.

True. You and I are fairly overlappy though.

Then again, this may not be the real world.

I'm always happily surprised to find someone with similar tastes to me. It doesn't happen that often in the real world.

Yes, I know what you mean. Luckily, it doesn't happen all that often, at least if you know the person well.

Yep! That's it, exactly, Bunny!

Yeah, and then you suddenly realise you don't have a character and taste overlap in some places where you thought that you did. Its somehow really heartwarming when somebody else "gets it." And sort of heart sinking when they don't. Especially if you thought they would.

I know I'm not hurt if a friend who doesn't like SF doesn't like a book I enjoyed in that genre, no matter how much I enjoyed it.
I think the ones that hurt the most are the friends who we think we have matched perfectly, where you go out of your way to endorse the book...

I know what you mean. I have a friend who does not read much but bought the book written by her favorite band (name escapes me) but not one I would ever think of spending money on. She admitted it was trash but kept having me cracking up with quotes about the drugs, ect... the band got into. Even books that arn't worth the paper they are made of can be funny, lol.

I think Jackie's point about the tastes of the reader is important. For example, I like irony, I like wordplay, I like black humor. I have a number of friends who don't really like any of those things much. So some things that will just crack me up won't stir the slightest laugh with them. Doesn't mean either of us is mistaken, just means we are different people.

I know what you mean, Lisa. I feel so responsible for their enjoyment when I recommend books.

I have a friend who gave A Wrinkle in Time , one of my favorite books of all time, 3 stars. Actually, she read it at my suggestion years ago and just liked it, and she didn't like Meg, which completely flabbergasted me. Once I got over that shock, I now don't get perturbed if friends don't like what I like, although I sometimes feel guilty recommending books if friends read them and then don't enjoy them that much.

I've learned to be careful both ways, Abigail. I no longer expect anyone to love what I love, and when I read a favorite of someone else's that doesn't click with me, I try to see what it was they appreciated when I talk to them about it.
I do readers' advisory at the library, which means recommending the books that match the taste of the patron, not just your own favorites. Though I do that, too. :D

Hmm... I guess this is one area where I'm not that sensitive (for a change!). I'm always disappointed when a friend doesn't like one of my favorites, but I can't say that it really upsets me.

I felt the same way about The Eyre Affair. I know a lot of people love it, but I didn't.

I know I disappointed a friend recently with my less-than-glowing opinion of the Eyre Affair. I liked it, but she had expected me to love it, as she did.

I know! I always am wary of recommending by personal favorites to people, because I know people have different tastes.
I get protective and wary when someone notices my glowing 5 star review, and decides to read the book, when I can see it's really not their thing.

True, lol. It is hard talking about a favorite when your friends and relative get enthused buy or borrow the book and then hate it.

Ha! Probably true. Although I try to be okay with it, its really hard when my friends and my books don't get along.

I really did. And good thing too, since otherwise Sherri might not talk to me.

Aww. He hee. Good though, now you could actually read the book. Which I see you liked very much.

In the second half of the book, my annotator fizzled out a bit, mostly just underlining names, and putting checkmarks next to the occasional passage. Our relationship is over.

Or Pale Fire. Where an odd possibly insane man attempts to annotate a lengthy poem and in the process reveals very much more about himself than he does about the poem.

Reminds me a little of King Dork, where the kid spends the book trying to learn about his father through some cryptic notes in a book.

Depends on the book, sometimes I just leave random (accidental) comments and sometimes purposful "if you like this book you would also like this one" notes.

Do you make it look purposeful or accidental?

My favorite is to put post it notes in library books hidden in places with comments about the books or reading recommendations.

Heee, okay now I am also developing a fondness for your mystery annotator.

LtUaE, yes.

My mystery annotater is cracking me up. In addition to the block text underlines, this person circles certain words and puts what seems to be one-word definitions in some Cyrillic script. Some of them are logical things to circle, being words invented for the book, such as "kemmer". Others include "muttered" and "oath" and "anxiety", which kind of confuses me since there are far more difficult words on most pages.
Also, in the chapter "The question of sex", the following question is scrawled in the margin next to an entire underlined page about the estrus cycle:
"Do we have to know it?"

I'm enjoying the relationship with this eager student as part of the reading of the book.

LtUaE?
Life the Universe and Everything?

I read LHoD when I was 25—picked up at a library sale. It was a hard slog, for some reason, but I was into 'making' myself read hard slogs then—I was studying Faulkner, after all. I probably need to revisit it—my understanding of LtUaE has changed a great deal since then. I know I see the LeGuin's EarthSea books (the first three of which I'm very fond of; the others are on my to-read) very differently now.

I'd say I was sorry, Jackie, but I'd be lying :D

Aargh, now I have to reread it, Sherri!

I first tried to read this book in 3rd grade. I was at the local library and I saw a 6th grade girl with the book, so I got a copy. I made it to the future-telling scene, which is yet a vivid scene in my mind. I had no idea what was going on, even though I knew what the words meant (more or less).I put it down, of course, but it haunted me. I just had this feeling there was something huge in there.

I tried it again in 8th grade and tore through it. I was reading Heinlein by then, and just beginning to grasp a lot of those ideas. I think I read the book every year through my teens, and even now I pull it out every year or two for a reread. One year the politics were important. Another year, the human relationships. The romance, the terror, the travel adventure -- each reading was like reading a different book. And I still get tears in my eyes near the end.

It's just a book I've never outgrown. I feel like it's been in my life for the majority of my life. Sometimes I think I understand certain things because I read them there. I know a lot of the ideas I got from Heinlein were tempered and explained because of LeGuin.

Just that important :)

I read the Earthsea books in middle school, and the Lathe of Heaven around 14 or so...I'm sure that's when I first picked this up and put it down again.

It took me a couple of tries to actually read Left Hand, too, but I tried too young the first time. And quite possibly was too young still when I actually did read it.
I think it means more if you've actually experienced some of the male/female dynamic in play in your own life, and aren't still not really dating yet in high school...

Um? No I don't think so. I mean I think you told me it was important to you, but that's all I remember. Unless I'm having a brain failure, which is always a possibility.

Bun, did I never tell you about that book? I thought I'd told everybody!

Its an important book to me too, although sounds like maybe more important to you, Sherri. Still, yeah, highly recommended, glad to hear no hating so far.

Not hating it so far, never fear. You don't want to know how many times I've picked it up and put it down before, but each time it was the very first page that stopped me. Something about the block of text before the first sentence just threatened me.

Having gotten past that hurdle - I'm about seventy pages in, I think - I will not be stopped, except by having forgotten it at home today.

Well, not consciously :) But that book is one of my absolute favorites, a landmark book, a book with stories beyond the book, an Important Book. If you hate it, don't tell me.

Well, I may end up needing my own copy, but for now I'm trying trying trying to be good in general and not buy any books.
Edit: But wait a second... are you just trying to enable me? Getting back at me for sending you links to Powells? Hmm...

Hehheh, Sarah, it's such a favorite book of mine that I'd have to have my own copy regardless, just so i could pet it (And I have to have the original paperback cover, too -- I have the rattiest paperback now, and a nice hardback, but the hb doesn't have that cover on it!) :) Of course, no one else in my family actually reads, so it's never an issue.

I was considering mentioning it to them, but I'm afraid their budget is such that it would mean they just culled it without replacing it. Maybe I'll do as Amelia suggests and buy them a new one.
Sherri - I could find a used copy in two seconds. I'm trying to be good and not buy it right now. I try not to duplicate stuff that's already in the family, since books circulate among us so freely.

I'm surprised the library is still circulating a copy so marked up. I wonder if they don't know how marked up it is.