Hey, you should read this: Using Twitter to market the books you wrote.

I got a tweet yesterday on my private account–not that it’s protected or anything, but I just mean, on my non-book account–from an author imploring me to check out his work online. I had never encountered this author before, and I really had no bloody idea why on earth I should want to check out his “fiction” in a magazine–no, I mean really, I had no idea why he had approached me or what about me made him think I might connect to his work. A quick glance at his Twitter told me that he didn’t really know why I would like it, either–most of his tweets had the same indiscriminate message blasted at a number of targets: Check out my work “X” at website Y!

Being the sweet, caring, and politic person that I am, I told him he was doing it wrong.

To my surprise, he answered back. “Please enlighten, I am too new to Twitter.” How to encapsulate it in 140 characters? I promised him I’d write a blog about it, so here I am, writing a blog about it. He’s not the only person who can benefit from this information, really–I get and see a lot of ill-advised tweeting from people who think it will help boost their sales, but don’t understand that Twitter is not an advertising forum.

If you’re an author who has heard that social media is the way to get readers, but you don’t know how to do it or it hasn’t been working for you, fear not–I’m here to help. This post is specifically about Twitter, but the basic concepts can be used for any social media.

Problem: You post lots of information about your writing, but not very many people are following you or visiting the links that you post up.

Would you watch a television channel that was all commercials, or peruse a website that was all ads? Unless the channel or site was dedicated to exceptional examples of advertising, I’m guessing that you would not. Building your Twitter account with the primary aim of using it to directly market your books–such as by Tweeting random people “Hey you should read my book” or only posting about events related to selling your book–means that you’re basically creating a “channel” that is wall-to-wall advertising. The people that you do manage to get to follow you will probably mentally block your feed within a week.

Solution: Spend the majority of your time on social media building genuine relationships and putting out desirable content.

Social media is called that for a reason–be social! Talk to people. Make friends, remembering that the person who goes on incessantly about their own projects comes off being a tiny bit self-absorbed. Instead, ask people about their projects. Form collaborations, or guest post on blogs. Put yourself out there, and be generous and genuine. Or, barring that, be wickedly funny. People on the internet love the lulz. You get followers because there’s something in it for them to follow you.

Not talking about your projects may seem counter-intuitive, but remember what I said about the all-advertising channel. People will turn it off. You can talk a little bit about your projects, but know when ease back. Good things to post are (brief) information regarding events, upcoming publications or appearances–”news,” in other words, especially items that would be helpful to other people. I personally find you can get away with repeating “news” once or twice if you space it out, but too much repetition causes that mental off-switch that you want to avoid. (People on Twitter can be a little tetchy, too. The etiquette rules are quite complex and can be difficult to grasp before you have been there for some time. Playing it safe is better at first.)

Problem: You put out awesome content, and you have a decent amount of followers, but people are still not reading your books.

So, you’ve done step one–you have developed into an awesome tweeter, people are willingly following you–you might even have more followers than you are following at this point, and it’s kind of a big deal when you cross that threshold for the first time. But your sales are still pretty abysmal. What gives?

Solutions: Various potential solutions.

One problem is that you might not be connecting with the right audience. People on Twitter tend to run in circles a lot of the time; I myself have two different accounts, and my follower bases couldn’t be more different, save a few core people that follow both. A very few. My @thebooksluts account has–you guessed it–a lot of readers, writers, and a few publishers that I interact with regularly. My personal account has far more political followers, along with people who are local to where I live, and some people who cook, because I connect with people very differently on that account than I do on my booksluts Twitter. If you write crime thrillers but, because you play video games, have a lot of RPG aficionados as Twitter friends, they’re probably less likely to read your books. Not that you should dump your gamer friends, but consider widening your audience to connect with bookish types who like crime thrillers.

If you have acquired a few trusted confidants, try DMing them and asking if there’s something you’re doing wrong or that you could be doing better. Don’t come off needy or whiny, just that you’re looking for tips to improve communication without being spammy. I find that doing this privately is the best route, as any other conversations are very public, even if they don’t “feel” public. Your friends might be able to give you some great insight.

Make sure, too, that all of your social media is working together. If you’re linking people from Twitter to, say, a blog, and the blog is turning people off for some reason, or your website or what have you, it might not be because of your tweets at all.

Problem: I found someone on Twitter who has a book blog or a website and I want them to feature my book, but after I tweeted them a link, they basically told me to piss off or they ignored me. What did I do wrong?

Starting a conversation with a link to your work is like asking someone out on a date while showing them your genitals. A little romance first would be nice! And really, if you’re trying to (ahem) expose yourself to people who will read your book, this is the way to go, rather than approaching random people on social media. Why? Because book bloggers and websites that feature reviews have fans who want book recommendations. You want people to read your book, and the blog audience wants suggestions on awesome new books to read, so it’s really a match made in heaven if you can get the reviewer on board.

Solution: Romance us, dammit!

First, read the blog or website that you want to be on, or think that you want to be on. You might find out that you actually do not want to be on the site–maybe you write books that the reviewer doesn’t tend to enjoy and he or she would give you a bad review, or maybe the blog audience isn’t your audience.

See if there is a protocol for pitching a book to the person for a review or a feature. Many book bloggers have this on their site. If they have this, then you just follow the protocol. Following the protocol scores MAJOR POINTS because a lot of people? do not follow protocols. A lot of people do not bother to read things that have been posted up, or seem to think that those posts do not apply to them, or something. It makes us predisposed to warm fuzzy feelings when instructions are followed.

If there’s nothing like that on their website, and you have ascertained that your book goes with their audience and their tastes, start by saying something like this: “Hey! I was reading your site and I loved it. I especially liked review of X. I wrote a book that is quite similar to X, do you accept books to review?” Approaching the person like a human being and letting them know that you actually have read their blog will get you in quicker than indiscriminate tweeting; asking if they accept books rather than “will you accept my book” is smart, too, because it’s less pressure for them. If I feel like I’m being pressured, I almost always say no.

Tip: Don’t try to be tricky and sneak your book into conversations that are not about your book. Seriously. Even if you try to make it seem funny, it’s not funny because we know what you’re doing, and it makes us feel like pieces of meat that you look at with dollar signs in your eyes. “Got a vacation coming up, huh? Does that mean you’ll finally have time to read my book?! Eh?! I’m just kidding, we kid, oh this is so funny–but no, seriously, are you ever going to read my book?” Yeah. Don’t do this.

Remember, above all: social media =/= social marketing.

Nobody goes to social media because they desire marketing. Even super famous people with a zillion followers don’t spend all their time sitting around saying “buy my book/watch my show/etc!” They wouldn’t have a zillion followers if they did that. The point of Twitter, if you’re using it to connect with your current or potential future fanbase, is that just being on Twitter and doing a good job at Twitter reminds them that you are there. It’s exposure. And sure, when your newest book gets published, you’ll want to tweet about it–”So happy! My new book finally hit the presses today!”–but the way you would share it with friends, not consumer sheep.

How ’bout you guys? What turns you off when it comes to Twitter marketing? Have you found any tactics to be successful? Tell us in the comments!

The Booksluts Discuss: Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

Book: Zazen

Author: Vanessa Veselka

Published: May 31, 2011 by Red Lemonade; 256 pages

Date Read: February 6, 2012

First Lines: ”I went to work and a guy I wait on said he was leaving. He said everyone he knew was pulling out.”

Genre: Literary fiction

Amy’s rating: 5/5  Buzz Lightyears lashed to miniature graveside crosses

Susie’s rating: 5/5 candy-colored rat phones

Warning: Extreme gushing about how much we loved this book ahead. Amy and I were both fairly bowled over by Ms. Veselka’s debut novel. Also, I was having a sad because I had to trim down our conversation about Zazen, because we had many things to say about it and it’s super fun talking to Amy about books. So, I’ve decided to post an extended version(!) of our conversation here, just in case some of you would like to see more about what we had to say. Everything that is down below is also on the extended post, so you don’t have to read both if you don’t want to!

Vanessa Veselka describes herself as having been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, a student of paleontology, an expatriate, an independent record label owner, a train-hopper, a waitress, and a mother–is it any wonder that she is also a writer? She fills Zazen to the brim with life and it bubbles over in streams of achingly beautiful language. Zazen tells the story of Della, a geologist/waitress who wants to get away from everything. She hears bombs in her head and can’t escape the monuments to shiny plastic capitalism that keep going up where she lives. When she hooks up with a girl named Jimmy who is leaving the country, Della buys a ticket, too. But she doesn’t go–instead, she starts calling in bomb threats, mentally attacking the places that threaten her neighborhood. She finds herself in deeper than she ever imagined when the real bombs start going off in places she’s called.

Amy: We both loved, loved, loved it! Best book I’ve read so far this year, by far.
Susie: I’m also so glad that we read it. I was enchanted (as much as you can be enchanted by a book that is about terrorism and war and hippies).
Amy: Almost every line was a poem in itself. I’m going to try to find the one, early on, that hooked me.
Susie: I loved her use of imagery. During the “anniversary” scene she talked about Della’s mother in terms of a tsunami–ocean imagery is dicey because it can be so overdone, but hers was perfect.

“Grace rose from the table like a tsunami. With her breath she washed away the debris of the past until we were all floating in her massive sorrow and buoyed by her absolute conviction in life, vibrant and wild on the shores, she carried us forward and that’s how we landed, all of us on this strange beach.” –Zazen

Amy: Bah, I can’t find the specific line, annoying. One I did find: “I had been kissing the hems of ghosts.” *swoon* Gorgeous.
Amy: Her use of language and imagery is masterful. The recurring themes of the self-immolators, the pregnant rat, her sister, the ocean… so many common (and often ugly) things, but made beautiful with her language around them.
Susie: I identified a lot with this book because it is about how ugly things have gotten–and it is frustrating. It’s compelling to follow someone who is acting on her frustration. Veselka said in an interview that she was trying to capture a culture, I think in this case the revolutionary/neo-hippie culture, but also contrasted against our mainstream consumerism.

 ”… what is this book? Hmm … another Buddhist geological thriller? A secular spiritual epic? You know, just the other day in a radio interview I actually failed to describe my own book. It was a low point. … One day I was listening to an English professor talk about encyclopedic fiction. He defined it as a work that attempts to encapsulate an entire culture. I immediately realized that’s what I was trying to do.” — Vanessa Veselka in an interview with Literary Kicks

Amy: That’s interesting. It did make me think of that – what the 60s protesters would be, were they around now. How they would use modern technology to their advantage, what they would protest against, how they would go about getting their point across.
Amy: It’s a frightening book, because it’s just vague enough that it could very much happen, and any day now, you know? No details for us to grab onto to say, “Oh, well, that couldn’t happen because THAT person wasn’t president,” etc. She purposely left everything vague so it could be us, in an indeterminate future. Chilling.

Susie: I loved the subtlety of her writing. Her humor was subtle–and she treated sex subtly, which I appreciated. She also doesn’t beat you over the head with anything; she doesn’t tell you what she’s getting at.
Amy:  The book didn’t hand you anything – it let you make up your own mind. I liked that. It treated me like an adult reader.
Susie: Something else I love–you can tell that she’s actually lived what she’s writing about. It’s not just some airy construct in her brain.
Amy: YES! I was so happy to see her list of jobs, and that she was writing from a place of knowledge with them.
Amy: Did I miss the story behind the title? Or was there not one?
Susie: Sitting zazen is a Buddhist thing. It’s basically sitting meditation.
Amy: Oh! I didn’t know that, I’d never heard the word before! I thought of it more as a nonsense word – in my mind, it was the sound of bombs flying overhead. Which almost works too, even if it isn’t what she was going for.
Susie: It does kind of sound like that, I hadn’t thought about it. I used to have a Buddhist roomie so I know a smattering of things about Buddhism. (Well, he was supposedly Buddhist–I think he told himself that to make him feel better about being a dick, but that’s another story.)
Amy: This is probably a bad book for a lengthy discussion because I have all the love for it.
Susie: I hope she writes more books and that they’re just as good as Zazen was. Totally would recommend it to anybody, and in fact I’m going to try to make my husband read it, ha.

Veselka and Zazen get two thumbs up from us. Each. So I guess that’s a total of four thumbs. So, you should probably read it, because that’s a lot of thumbs. As an added bonus, it’s available to read, for free, in its entirety, on the publisher’s website. Of course, this means reading on a screen, which kind of sucks, but it is free. (I have no doubt that the book will be winging its way to people soon, even if they start off reading it for free on the site. It’s just that good.)

Reading Rage Tuesday: Types of characters I never want to read in a book again.

I want to talk about characters again; after all, the cast of a novel plays a vital role in one’s emotional response to many books. I wrote before about specific characters I’d like to punch in the face; today’s characters aren’t single characters that, while generally well-written, make my blood boil with their asshatty ways. No, these characters are literary epidemics for which we must find a vaccine. These characters make swine flu look like a good way to spend a weekend. They’re everywhere and we need to put a stop to them right now.

(Of course, this is by no means applicable to writers who are able to take these types of characters and make them dynamic and interesting.)

Characters who have generous financial means to solve problems and no significant mental distress.

I’m not saying that wealthy people don’t have problems that money can’t solve. There are a lot of fucked-up well-to-do families, and their stories make for dramatic reading when done properly. More and more, though, I’m seeing memoirs creeping onto the scene that focus on the midlife crisis of the advantaged upper-class person. Having realized that they’re having a crisis, these people don’t do anything cool like turn to heroin, run away and become prostitutes, or develop a gambling problem and go broke [NOTE: THIS IS SARCASM, DO NOT DO THESE THINGS, YOU WILL NOT BE COOL]. Instead, we get stories about how they throw caution to the wind and have (gasp) sex and buy some new shoes or go on vacation or something.

Yawn.

This character bores the hell out of me because the character never struggles in a way that has any lasting significance. Bored of marriage? You can afford a divorce lawyer–you’ll be quite eligible in no time! Confidence shaken? A sympathetic ear at $100 an hour will have you feeling amazing. Cushy job isn’t fulfilling your creative side? You have enough in the kitty to start your own successful business, and also probably an awesome idea that won’t fail, right? Without a conflict the character finds difficult to overcome, the book reads a bit like Donald Trump’s diary: “Was hugely successful again today! One of my casinos went broke, but I was over it by noon when my other casino made a kajillion dollars. A few people made fun of my hair, but hey–I have enough money for a new hairstyle, I like it this way, so they can fuck off because I am awesome.”

What's The Donald thinking here? Give me your best caption in the comments!

The chronically self-sabotaging person (aka, you never learn, do you?).

 How many times do you have to fuck up before you figure out that you’re doing it wrong? For this character, it is every time. This character never makes a connection between their behavior and the chaos that ensues afterward. Which, granted, there are a lot of people in the world who are like that; I’ve known more than a few people who live their lives running full-tilt at the same brick wall. I don’t really want to read a book about these people, though–and judging from some of your comments on the post about how to ruin your YA fantasy novel, a lot of you feel the same way. Characters have to change. They either need to spiral totally beyond salvation or redeem themselves. If the character is the same at the end of the book as at the beginning, what’s the point of writing a book about them? Zero. There is no point at all. Thanks for wasting my time, self-sabotaging character.

Couples who keep fucking everything up because they are entrenched in gender stereotypes.

I searched "divorce" on Flickr and this came up. Is this not totally sad? Wait--is the dad SMILING? "Leaving my shrew of a wife today, OHHHH YEAAAAAH." (I think that is his nose. But it could be a jaunty smile.)

Picture this: a man and a woman, dating or married. The man is a macho macho man, the woman a rather uncertain feminist–she wants the kids, the career, and some power of her own, but just can’t kick that pesky man-loving habit. He does all of the macho things; he expects her to do the dishes, cook dinner, do the laundry, watch the kids while he drinks beer with his buddies, and put out when he gets home. Or maybe he’s more subtle than that–maybe he is one of those mostly-modern males who has that fierce, protective I am man! streak running through him that never fails to pop up when given the opportunity. Depending on which side of the coin she’s on, she either unfailingly forgives him in an effort to make it work (or, like in the sitcoms, because she’s feeling smug and superior to small-brain husband), or she fights him tooth and nail every step of the way because she’s every woman. Then he asks if she’s on the rag and she cries and locks herself in the bathroom, or maybe keys his car.

Very few couples run into the same conflict and respond the exact same way all the time. Unless you have the insight of an amoeba, you generally learn how to get along in a marriage (either well or badly, but you make something work to keep from screaming at each other every day) or you build up to a spectacular drama-explosion and the marriage ends. In a dramatic work, I want to see the learning or the explosion, not this constant irritant that never, despite the author’s mediocre best efforts, seems to turn into a pearl. I want a pearl, goddammit. Also, the evolution of gender roles in society can be fascinating when approached correctly. There’s a lot of interesting shit going down in the world of gender roles, people. It’s exciting and terrifying and uncertain. With the whole gender spectrum to explore, plugging husband into slot M and wife into slot F and turning on the autopilot when you go gender-spelunking is lazy writing. I didn’t pay fifteen bucks to read the novelization of King of Queens or Leave It to Beaver.

The [insert minority here] character as a sensitivity-training tool, especially written by people who aren’t part of that group.

This character type makes me want to take a hammer to my skull because, if you’re looking in from outside–in some cases, way outside–someone else’s struggle, you can’t write convincingly about that person’s struggle. I’m going to pick on James Ross again for a minute because this example is kind of perfect. In the book Tuey’s Course, Ross claims to be tackling the difficult issue of racism. The problem is that Ross is whiter-than-white and has never been on the receiving end of racism, nor does he really seem to have much of an idea what it’s like to be a black person. As a result, Tuey O’Tweety is such a half-assed throwback to the stereotypical “house Negro” mixed with a 20-years-outdated knowledge of “black culture” that even the Grand Wizard would be unconvinced of Tuey’s authenticity. Tuey is long-suffering, always in trouble with the law; he laughs good-naturedly when some asshole country club drunk does “impreshuns” of him, and probably would’ve slapped his knee if Captain Jer had smeared on blackface; he’s a big fan of rappers “Shriek Caramel U-Hop” and “MiSSuS KuLe BReeZe SiSTa JaNeLLe”, but turns it down like a good boy when the white guys complain that the gangsta rap gives them a headache (a middle-aged Kenny G* fan didn’t name those rappers at all, btw); he’s far too poor to play golf with the guys; and, worst of all, he talks like this through the whole book: “Sum uh da fellas wanted ta git tagedda fo’ ole times sake.” Oh, and bonus: Mrs. O’Tweety’s name is LeVournique, and she apparently dresses like a gypsy drag queen with bright makeup and fake costume bling. As Arnold would say, “I am not shitting on you.”

*I’m only guessing that James Ross likes Kenny G. But I bet he does. How do you like stereotyping now, Mistuh Ross?

Things turn sour for cheerful Tuey at the end, and he perishes in a violent shootout with city officials (a violent end, SO CLEVER AND UNEXPECTED)–a shootout which he initiates because he has rabies. (Not that rabies is a racial stereotype, but shit, you guys, HE HAD RABIES. Maybe it is Ross’s way of explaining why the gangstas are so darn violent with their baggy pants and their rap music–maybe they are all rabid. BEST PLOT TWIST EVER.)

Could have saved Tuey's Course with a little more Mammy. Everybody loves Mammy, right?

Ross has indicated that he thinks that his work is part of a serious discourse on racism in America, but the only profound thing that comes across in his work is the fact that he’s looking at racism through Extreme CrackerVision. He can’t write these characters convincingly because he doesn’t know these characters; this is a major pitfall for people trying to “enlighten” others about something that they, the writers, have never personally experienced. As a person with an autism spectrum condition, I cannot wait for his upcoming book featuring autistic main characters. It’s going to be the most wretched thing ever put to paper awesome.

Based on his nuanced characterization of Tuey, I'm pretty sure this will be the template for his autistic characters. I could be wrong.

The other reason I find this type of character completely annoying is that they don’t tend to be real characters at all. Authors often use these characters as vessels to carry a message. I hate preachy books and I hate characters who aren’t realistic. I find a character who is supposed to be a representative of a group rather than an individual person a bit of a literary insult; I always feel a little miffed, for example, when I read an author falling flat trying to write a female as All Women rather than as a person who happens to have a vagina. No two women are alike, and I imagine that fact extrapolates to other categories of people, so creating this representative-of-the-group’s-struggles character without individuality will likely be full of fail.

(Actually, can we just stop making crusades of our fiction altogether? Just tell me a story–one that makes me laugh, makes me cry, one that moves me. Shit, this is starting to sound like a bad ballad.)

Bros.

No special reason, I just don’t want to read about bros.

This is just the tip of the bad-character iceberg, my friends–but if I kept going, I could write a fucking book about bad characters (ironically, I would want to read a book full of bad characters if the book were making fun of said characters). What poorly-written character stereotypes make you want to drop-kick a novel? Leave em in the comments!

Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Book: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Author: Ransom Riggs

Published: June 2011 by Quirk Books, 348 pages

Date Read: January 2012

First Line: ”I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.”

Genre/Rating: Fantasy/mystery; 3/5 blue balls of flame floating over a broken-hearted girl’s hand

Review: This book was being discussed everywhere I turned, so it was high on my to-be-read list. I like quirk! I like photography! I like fantasy/mystery!

I wasn’t in love with this book.

Don’t get me wrong–I didn’t hate it, and wouldn’t tell anyone not to read it–but it didn’t blow me away.

The plot: sixteen-year-old Jacob travels to Wales with his father to fulfill his recently-departed grandfather’s dying wish: to investigate his claim that he lived in a magical orphanage as a child. Jacob was the sole witness to his grandfather Abe’s demise, and has since been haunted by what he thinks he saw that night; he thinks that he will receive some closure by making the trip. What he finds there–and what he discovers about both himself and his grandfather–is not what he imagined he would.

The book is illustrated with a number of “found” photos–one of which is on the cover, above, the “levitating” girl–which the author purports are all truly found photographs. The photos are the best part of the book. They’re serious and creepy and perfect eye-candy, very old-timey sideshow. I highly approve of the photos and the overall art direction of the book.

The story itself–it’s slight. I finished the book in a day. You don’t have to think about it too seriously. It doesn’t give you much to ponder. It’s not bad–I didn’t leave disgusted–just unfulfilled. Still hungry. It could have been more, and I was sad it wasn’t.

The characters seem two-dimensional; you don’t know much about their motivation. The book did set itself up for a sequel (or possibly a series), and I’m not sure if the unfinished air of the whole thing is because the author is keeping it all for the next book(s), or he just relied too heavily on the photographs and didn’t have enough story to carry him through.

I loved the character of Emma, and wanted to know more about her. Again, I’m not sure if the author’s saving that for subsequent book(s), or just didn’t think her character through thoroughly enough. Her correspondence with Abe was, to me, the pinnacle of the book. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be the pinnacle of the book, and there was a lot of book left to go.

The other children in the orphanage needed more backstory and more story-story, altogether. They were cardboard cutouts with a lot of unfulfilled potential.

I have to wonder at all the excellent reviews of the book I’m reading online, the reviews that led me to seek out the book so avidly, to be on a waiting list to read it for the past five months or so at the library. Am I the only one who thought the story took a backseat to the photos (which were, and I happily admit, awesome?) Or were people just so blown away by the art direction of the book they overlooked the story? And, if so, what does that say about the state of literature in the world today? Or is it that we’re just so eager for the next big thing–the next Harry Potter or Hunger Games–that we’re willing to overlook that this book was just–meh?

Tim Burton, purportedly, is interested in the movie version of the book. This I can get behind. Burton would work wonders with the magic in this story. It does have a very Big Fish feel about it, which Burton just made gorgeous, didn’t he? Because there’s magic there in the book, dying to get out, and Riggs just wasn’t skilled enough to extricate it. Burton, however, has the touch needed to make the children’s home a truly magic place. I can’t wait to see, if this deal comes to fruition, what his imagination would bring to the table.

Reading Rage Tuesday: I recommend that you kiss my ass.

If they can't find me, they can't make me do anything.

As a lover of literature, I love getting book recommendations. I do. I really do. So this rant is going to seem a little weird. Just bear with me.

Getting to hear about future favorite books must be the most awesome thing about being part of an online reading community. I probably would never have picked up Outlander if it weren’t for my Shelfari book club. Might never have stopped to read a Sookie Stackhouse novel if not for same. If I weren’t a book blogger, I might never have read the book Zazen based on a recommendation I found in some research I was doing (Amy and I will be reviewing this book shortly-ish). You guys have told me about all of your favorites–well, maybe not all but many–and my to-read list grows by half-feet daily.

Why, then, are recommendations the topic at hand on this fine Tuesday?

Over-recommenders.

We’re all prone to getting over-excited about our favorite books now and again, but the over-recommender doesn’t just occasionally step out of bounds when it comes to pushing his or her beloved works on you. The over-recommender lives out of bounds. The over-recommender considers it his or her duty to make sure that the whole world experiences the things that he or she considers worthy of attention. All of the things.

To try to be slightly fair, I am obstinate when it comes to being pushed around. If I get even a whiff of pushiness, my gut instinct is to dig in my heels. If that doesn’t work, I pull the toddler maneuver: I sit down on the ground and make it damn near impossible for anybody to drag me anywhere. So, the over-recommender and I really do not get on well. At all.

I also tend to push back any work that doesn’t look like it will fit my tastes. Not that I’m not all about trying new things, or even things that I don’t think I will like–I love Cormac McCarthy, for example, and he’s often compared to Faulkner, for whom I have little affection. I can generally tell fairly quickly if I’m going to like something or not, though, and I tend to favor things that I will like over things that I don’t think I will (note to self: way to go, Captain Obvious). The over-recommender doesn’t operate based on what his or her friends enjoy, though, and there’s another potential conflict: they’re not recommending because you will love this thing, they’re recommending because they love this thing. And there’s no polite way to brush off an over-recommender, because they keep coming at you like they’re Michael Myers and you’re a teenage girl in skimpy panties.

(Do you ever wonder what Michael Myers does when it’s not Halloween? Do you think he hangs out with Santa? Or maybe he goes on Carnival Cruises?)

This is where it gets ugly. The over-recommender persists in nagging you every chance he or she gets. Trying to demur fails. Telling them that you’re busy fails. Saying, “I don’t think this is going to be a good fit for me” fails. Of course it is going to be a good fit for you, it is AMAZEBALLS-TASTIC FOREVER. This is the point where most people would give in and read (et al.) the damn thing just to end the conversation.

NOT ME!

A typical set of exchanges between myself and an over-recommender might go something like this:

Me: Yammering on about something that is interesting to me, like I usually do, because I have Asperger’s and there’s almost no mental filter available when I get onto a subject that fascinates me. (Which is probably almost as annoying as over-recommending, but I’m working on it, at least.)

Over-recommender: Hey, speaking of that, have you heard about this thing that is marginally related?

Me: Um… no.

OR: Oh, you should definitely check it out. ZOMG SO GOOD. Definitely. Check. Out. Definitely check. Definitely. Out.

Me: Okay!

I check it out. I see that it’s a book written by the same author that this person has recommended to me about four hundred different times and by whom I’ve already read other works that I didn’t like. I put it in my “probably not going to read this” file.

Around the time that I have just forgotten the recommendation:

OR: HEY! Did you read the thing yet?

Me: Oh! Uh, what thing?

OR: YOU KNOW. The book I told you about a month ago that is the most amazing thing since humans discovered fire.

Me: Oh, right. Um, not yet.

OR: DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT

I start to get a little testy. And promptly forget everything about the thing I am supposed to read out of spite.

OR: Hey, did you read it yet? Didja? Didja?

Me: No.

OR: Here, you can borrow my copy, I have like ten copies just take it okay? REEEEEEEEAAAAADDDD ITTTTTTTT readitreaditreaditreaditreadit

Me: You know, it’s really not my kind of thing–

OR: NO IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE ANSWER.

headwall

OR: You STILL haven’t read it? Here, sit down, I will read it to you.

Me: I.. what? No. No! Look, I don’t really want to–what the . . . did you just handcuff me to a chair?

OR: Yeah, I sure did! Check it out, I even have created different voices for all of the characters!

I pick up the chair and start beating them with it. I go to jail, but it was worth it.

Fin.

I think there should be a rule that if you recommend something to someone, you can only follow up on it a maximum of one time. And I think at least six months should have to pass between the initial recommendation and the follow-up. Because if someone recommends something to me, and I read it, and I agree that it is amazeballs-tastic forever, I’m going to chat them up and say, “OMG YOU WERE SO RIGHT” the first thing when I finish it. If I don’t agree, I will probably avoid the topic to have to keep from having the “I think your favorite thing sucks” conversation. I think probably 95%* of people understand that this is how recommendations work; you either revel in it together or you recognize that you have different tastes and the other person just may not be that into it. It’s that other 5%* that is ruining it for everyone, and by everyone, I mostly mean me.

*Completely made-up statistics.

What do you think, booksluttians? Am I totally weird, or have you encountered your own pushy recommendations? Ever lose a friend over bad recommendations? Tell me your stories in the comments!

P.S. I’m sorry if this isn’t up to my usual rage. I just started a new job and I am SO FUCKING TIRED. And sore. And tired. Did I mention so tired?