Sometimes I find negative reviews more helpful in picking a book to read than positive reviews. A detailed negative review telling me what they disliked (which I might like) is way more helpful than a vague positive review.
I totally agree with that "I'd like mental health in books to be more satirical" notion! As a guy with many mental health struggles, I'm kind of sick and tired of this depressing narrative. I already have to live these grim and dark emotions, why should something *I* relate to be sanitized to appeal to neurotypical people's ideas of mental health struggles? I also feel like hammering on the point that it's difficult and removing the dark comedy aspect of it helps stigmatize it more - since it's dark and depressing we shouldn't talk about it at all, in a sense. But no, give me caustic characters! Give me sass! Give me absurdism!
I really like your point about appealing to neurotypical people's ideas of mental health. I mentioned it in my comment, but I feel like books such as A Little Life have given neurotypical people an idea of what mental health is supposed to look like in books, and anything that doesn't pander to that version is wrong - either flippant or romanticized or unrealistic. I think people who struggle with mental illness are much more likely to recognize that even if a particular story doesn't exactly capture their experience with mental illness, that doesn't mean it's wrong. Like, I would never read a book with a mentally ill character and say "That's not how this is, the author was too xyz" because I recognize that the author's experience has differed from mine and the way they chose to show illness may be reflecting a different perspective or interaction with the themes.
I think all new writers should watch this video - it puts negative feedback in a new light and proves how subjective reading is. Thank you for the motivation to keep writing!
I am only two books into your video so far but I LOVE that your taste in books focuses on dark humor and satire to combat the difficulties of living with mental illness. I am 100% with you. It is all fine and good and essential to do the wellness stuff, but by jove do you gotta laugh at the void sometimes; it helps me get back into the driver’s seat and enjoy life. Thank you for spotlighting this often misunderstood genre!
This video was so much fun to watch! These reviews are HILARIOUS. i love 1-star reviews, they're amazing 😂😂 people indeed are dramatic but they do have some points. I love the fact that you loved many of the aspects that those reviewers hated. It shows perfectly just how subjective reading is and it all comes down to your experiences. Honestly, that just made me want to read all of them to find out what I think about them for myself hahah
I feel like a real theme for several of these books is that people think that mental illness can only be represented in The One Right Way, in the way that books like A Little Life deal with it - devastating, dark, and intense - and consider anything else to either be flippant or romanticized. But as someone who struggles with mental illness, I use dark humour all the time to cope, and I know a lot of other people do too! I really have to disagree with the person saying that Cleopatra and Frankenstein romanticized mental illness. Cleo's illness was so well handled. Was it melodramatic? Absolutely, but that doesn't mean it's unrealistic or anything. I also read the character as romanticizing her own illness, playing into the manic pixie dream girl vibes, and I very much think that was intentional on the author's part. Cleo was unmedicated and untreated and was reacting to her surroundings by crafting a version of herself that she thought she was supposed to be. The Tragic Artist trope is definitely alive and well in the art world, and people tend not to want to respect the art of someone who hasn't been "through something" because that means they have nothing of value to say. I think Mellors made a very intentional choice to have Cleo romanticize her own illness, but it's on the reader to identify this and interpret it as a design choice and not an inherent message of the story.
This is such a fun idea for a TH-cam video :D I’d love to see more in the future! Going through reviews of books I’ve read is one of my favorite pastimes lol
i read the first two books and they didn't hit for me despite also being a mental illness girly but i really enjoyed hearing about why you liked them! I'm getting back into reading as an adult so i guess i was hoping to get something ~deep~ out of these books but you made a really great point about just wanting to relate to our mental health in a fun and comical way. I'm considering giving these a reread in the future with that perspective in mind!
This was so fun, you inspired me to do this type of video! I also love how you talk about your favourite books, makes it easy for me to determine whether the book would be something I'd enjoy or not! 💜
Definitely going to read Year of Rest and Relaxation now lol I think you'd really enjoy Boy Parts by Eliza Clark if you haven't read that yet. Great video, thanks so much!
I really enjoyed this. I am interested in almost all of these books. I think people don’t always understand satire or why it’s good to have flawed characters and that an immoral character does not equate an immoral author. We learn from flaws and therefore from seeing that illustrated through characters actions especially when questionable. It doesn’t mean the author is glorifying it. Also these characters are interesting. Also I love how you genuinely enjoyed the bad reviews and were able to see the fun and humor in them. That says a lot about your character. 😊
So my take away is that Jenanie liked weird and disturbing lit fic.( Did you love Earthlings, too?) As for me, I like your reactions to the one-star reviews. In reading there is room for a spectrum of reactions, so it's amusing to see how irate the readers get when a hyped book is shitty in their experience. I find that negative reviews are more revealing than positive ones, to be honest. It's why I love DNF videos.
This is the first of your videos I’ve watched, and it won’t be the last! I love your taste and how you express your thoughts. And how gracious you are!
My Year of RaR.. I didn't even get to her dark strugle with depression...after the scene where "best friend" come to borrow some clothes or a bag is where I DNF it.
You were such a good sport reading these lol! A book I think you might like is Community Board by Tara Conklin! The protagonist is another delulu white woman but the tone is much lighter and much *sillier* than the ones mentioned here. It’s so satirical and fun and features some really sweet relationships. A lot of people rate it low and I can see why the main character isn’t for everyone, but I could see this being another one of these 3.5ish star books that you click with!
I'm one of those people who felt that mexican gothic wasn't mexican enough, but from a little bit of a different pov. I'm first generation US born, with half my family coming from mexico, and i was really excited to read a book that was about and set in the midcentury mexico my grandparents inhabited. So I was sorely disappointed to read an english gothic novel transplanted into mexico (which, again, was definitely moreno garcia's point about how colonial cultures don't assimilate and just steal, but it wasn't what I wanted). Maybe it's not a fair criticism, but i would have so loved a novel that delved more into the actual colonial history of mexico in a way that could only be mexican, eg the colonizers could have been Spanish and they could have lived in a huge haunted hacienda or something. (I also thought the mushrooms were kinda dumb lmao)
Totally fair argument!! I think there could've been a different version of this book out there that would've fulfilled more of what people were looking for-I definitely had a better time with it mainly because I had zero expectations of it before going in! Thank you for sharing your thoughts ☺️
it always makes me so sad when people don’t realize that there’s a difference between gothic and horror, gothic does not necessarily imply scary and should not be used synonymously with horror :( i feel like so much of the gothic charm gets lost because people expect this super duper scary stories
may i ask you something @thisstoryaintover? What's the value of this video? You're reacting to people reacting to your favourite books. If not for the algorythm and trends, how does this video contribute to the literary community? You expressed nothing, you critisized nothing. I'd wager it's worth naught. give us your original thoughts or don't post at all
... you know you don't have to watch it, right? i personally found a lot of value in this video, getting to hear two sides of the same coin from fans, and it's not like she's not giving any input at all. She's giving us her opinion on the validity of the review, and as someone who wants to potentially read these books, it's helping me gain a clearer understanding of the contents of this book and whether I'd enjoy it or not. Idk who shat in your breakfast, but if you dislike it so much, you can skip this video.
What is the value of this comment? Because as far as I can tell, it’s doing the same as she did (reacting to media content), but she also told us constructively what she likes about these books while engaging with community discourse around them which is more of a value-add than a bad faith comment. :( I hope you rethink your feedback in the future.
For fun. I'm sure that's a foreign concept to you. This comment is so mean-spirited. And on a video where she spoke candidly about having multiple depressive states? How nasty and tasteless.
![[UNCUT] ชาวบ้านถาม “นายกอุ๊งอิ๊งค์” ประชาชนมีกิน มีใช้ กี่โมง? I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ I 16 ส.ค. 67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tKZvOzLIJJc/mqdefault.jpg)
Oooh... What about a part 2 or reading reviews of 5 stars books on books you didn't like?
Sometimes I find negative reviews more helpful in picking a book to read than positive reviews. A detailed negative review telling me what they disliked (which I might like) is way more helpful than a vague positive review.
totally agree!!
I totally agree with that "I'd like mental health in books to be more satirical" notion! As a guy with many mental health struggles, I'm kind of sick and tired of this depressing narrative. I already have to live these grim and dark emotions, why should something *I* relate to be sanitized to appeal to neurotypical people's ideas of mental health struggles? I also feel like hammering on the point that it's difficult and removing the dark comedy aspect of it helps stigmatize it more - since it's dark and depressing we shouldn't talk about it at all, in a sense. But no, give me caustic characters! Give me sass! Give me absurdism!
I really like your point about appealing to neurotypical people's ideas of mental health. I mentioned it in my comment, but I feel like books such as A Little Life have given neurotypical people an idea of what mental health is supposed to look like in books, and anything that doesn't pander to that version is wrong - either flippant or romanticized or unrealistic. I think people who struggle with mental illness are much more likely to recognize that even if a particular story doesn't exactly capture their experience with mental illness, that doesn't mean it's wrong. Like, I would never read a book with a mentally ill character and say "That's not how this is, the author was too xyz" because I recognize that the author's experience has differed from mine and the way they chose to show illness may be reflecting a different perspective or interaction with the themes.
I think all new writers should watch this video - it puts negative feedback in a new light and proves how subjective reading is. Thank you for the motivation to keep writing!
I am only two books into your video so far but I LOVE that your taste in books focuses on dark humor and satire to combat the difficulties of living with mental illness. I am 100% with you. It is all fine and good and essential to do the wellness stuff, but by jove do you gotta laugh at the void sometimes; it helps me get back into the driver’s seat and enjoy life. Thank you for spotlighting this often misunderstood genre!
💖💖💖
This video was so much fun to watch! These reviews are HILARIOUS. i love 1-star reviews, they're amazing 😂😂 people indeed are dramatic but they do have some points. I love the fact that you loved many of the aspects that those reviewers hated. It shows perfectly just how subjective reading is and it all comes down to your experiences. Honestly, that just made me want to read all of them to find out what I think about them for myself hahah
I feel like a real theme for several of these books is that people think that mental illness can only be represented in The One Right Way, in the way that books like A Little Life deal with it - devastating, dark, and intense - and consider anything else to either be flippant or romanticized. But as someone who struggles with mental illness, I use dark humour all the time to cope, and I know a lot of other people do too! I really have to disagree with the person saying that Cleopatra and Frankenstein romanticized mental illness. Cleo's illness was so well handled. Was it melodramatic? Absolutely, but that doesn't mean it's unrealistic or anything. I also read the character as romanticizing her own illness, playing into the manic pixie dream girl vibes, and I very much think that was intentional on the author's part. Cleo was unmedicated and untreated and was reacting to her surroundings by crafting a version of herself that she thought she was supposed to be. The Tragic Artist trope is definitely alive and well in the art world, and people tend not to want to respect the art of someone who hasn't been "through something" because that means they have nothing of value to say. I think Mellors made a very intentional choice to have Cleo romanticize her own illness, but it's on the reader to identify this and interpret it as a design choice and not an inherent message of the story.
100% agree!!!
This is such a fun idea for a TH-cam video :D I’d love to see more in the future! Going through reviews of books I’ve read is one of my favorite pastimes lol
I really enjoyed this! Very humorous and such a good example of how reading is so subjective & personal. ❤
Honestly, you really sold me on most of these books in this video :D
music to my earsss 😍
i read the first two books and they didn't hit for me despite also being a mental illness girly but i really enjoyed hearing about why you liked them! I'm getting back into reading as an adult so i guess i was hoping to get something ~deep~ out of these books but you made a really great point about just wanting to relate to our mental health in a fun and comical way. I'm considering giving these a reread in the future with that perspective in mind!
I need a whole video running down all the books for us menty girls... cuz I need to commiserate with characters!! 🤣😝
This is on my list to film soon 👀💖
@@thisstoryaintover yaaaassss!! I can’t wait!!
This was so fun, you inspired me to do this type of video! I also love how you talk about your favourite books, makes it easy for me to determine whether the book would be something I'd enjoy or not! 💜
Definitely going to read Year of Rest and Relaxation now lol I think you'd really enjoy Boy Parts by Eliza Clark if you haven't read that yet. Great video, thanks so much!
I really enjoyed this. I am interested in almost all of these books. I think people don’t always understand satire or why it’s good to have flawed characters and that an immoral character does not equate an immoral author. We learn from flaws and therefore from seeing that illustrated through characters actions especially when questionable. It doesn’t mean the author is glorifying it. Also these characters are interesting.
Also I love how you genuinely enjoyed the bad reviews and were able to see the fun and humor in them. That says a lot about your character. 😊
just started big swiss and i LOVED what you said about it!
So my take away is that Jenanie liked weird and disturbing lit fic.( Did you love Earthlings, too?) As for me, I like your reactions to the one-star reviews. In reading there is room for a spectrum of reactions, so it's amusing to see how irate the readers get when a hyped book is shitty in their experience. I find that negative reviews are more revealing than positive ones, to be honest. It's why I love DNF videos.
This is the first of your videos I’ve watched, and it won’t be the last! I love your taste and how you express your thoughts. And how gracious you are!
This is iconic😂❤ I adore your views and videos! I’m sending you love (:
😂💖💖
@@thisstoryaintover 🫶😊
My Year of RaR.. I didn't even get to her dark strugle with depression...after the scene where "best friend" come to borrow some clothes or a bag is where I DNF it.
The way I would have to hide my face to not to be too honest with my expressions lol
😂😂😂
You were such a good sport reading these lol!
A book I think you might like is Community Board by Tara Conklin! The protagonist is another delulu white woman but the tone is much lighter and much *sillier* than the ones mentioned here. It’s so satirical and fun and features some really sweet relationships. A lot of people rate it low and I can see why the main character isn’t for everyone, but I could see this being another one of these 3.5ish star books that you click with!
This video was soo good!
I feel same as you about “year of rest and relaxation “ but I am self diagnosed depressed maybe that’s why 😮
With you on wanting more satirical/ funny. My brain is already a miserable place, I don’t need to read about miserable things too.
I'm one of those people who felt that mexican gothic wasn't mexican enough, but from a little bit of a different pov. I'm first generation US born, with half my family coming from mexico, and i was really excited to read a book that was about and set in the midcentury mexico my grandparents inhabited. So I was sorely disappointed to read an english gothic novel transplanted into mexico (which, again, was definitely moreno garcia's point about how colonial cultures don't assimilate and just steal, but it wasn't what I wanted). Maybe it's not a fair criticism, but i would have so loved a novel that delved more into the actual colonial history of mexico in a way that could only be mexican, eg the colonizers could have been Spanish and they could have lived in a huge haunted hacienda or something. (I also thought the mushrooms were kinda dumb lmao)
Totally fair argument!! I think there could've been a different version of this book out there that would've fulfilled more of what people were looking for-I definitely had a better time with it mainly because I had zero expectations of it before going in! Thank you for sharing your thoughts ☺️
I saw Mexican gothic at a shop for like £3 but didn’t pick it up cos of the bad reviews 🙈
Nooo don't do that!! Sometimes you may not agree with popular opinion!!
@@katgreer6113 you’re so right, I’ve not enjoyed so many books that are really popular and have good reviews
The way means of transportation are written in Mexican gothic tells me the author lives in a modern daycar centric north American city or town
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💜💜
it always makes me so sad when people don’t realize that there’s a difference between gothic and horror, gothic does not necessarily imply scary and should not be used synonymously with horror :( i feel like so much of the gothic charm gets lost because people expect this super duper scary stories
💞💞
Poor Greta 😂
ZERO COMMENTS 3 VIEWS ONE LIKE WOO
you're a real one 🥹🫶🏾
may i ask you something @thisstoryaintover? What's the value of this video? You're reacting to people reacting to your favourite books. If not for the algorythm and trends, how does this video contribute to the literary community? You expressed nothing, you critisized nothing. I'd wager it's worth naught. give us your original thoughts or don't post at all
... you know you don't have to watch it, right? i personally found a lot of value in this video, getting to hear two sides of the same coin from fans, and it's not like she's not giving any input at all. She's giving us her opinion on the validity of the review, and as someone who wants to potentially read these books, it's helping me gain a clearer understanding of the contents of this book and whether I'd enjoy it or not. Idk who shat in your breakfast, but if you dislike it so much, you can skip this video.
What is the value of this comment? Because as far as I can tell, it’s doing the same as she did (reacting to media content), but she also told us constructively what she likes about these books while engaging with community discourse around them which is more of a value-add than a bad faith comment. :( I hope you rethink your feedback in the future.
cause it’s her channel and she will post videos that she likes to make, even if it “doesn’t contribute with anything”! hope this helps
I’m hoping this comment is satire
For fun. I'm sure that's a foreign concept to you. This comment is so mean-spirited. And on a video where she spoke candidly about having multiple depressive states? How nasty and tasteless.