Letters to People I Hate

Dear book flippers, 

Really this is how you choose to impact the world? People are starving, no food, no water certainly no books to read. You live in a place where you are lucky enough to have books to read, even if you borrow them from the library. You can use them to learn about different things, to vicariously live through other people in their adventures, to connect with well written characters. All of this reading is bound to give you some opinions on what you like and don’t like about books. You will certainly gain opinions about what you like and don’t like about other people and what other people read.

I, for one, do not like Nicholas Sparks books and correspondingly, I am not a great fan of or friends with people who adore his writing. But for me it stops there. For you, you book flippers, who feel oh so powerful and almighty in your opinion, you feel it is ABSOLUTELY necessary to show the world what you think about a certain book and possibly make it harder for someone who adores that book to find it. You feel the need to flip the book to its back cover - hiding the front so that it’s difficult to see which book it is. This is your powerful (and passive aggressive) hate? It is SO goddamn obnoxious.

The people who turn the books back around (you didn’t think they turned themselves did you?) are the book store workers. Like me, jackass. It’s not the authors or the readers. I have enough tasks to occupy my time and I don’t need to spend twenty minutes rotating all of the Stephenie Meyer books back to their original position. Your passive aggressive actions cannot make you feel empowered, what is the point? There isn’t one.

I can see you being the type of person who has a lot of time on your hands. You would be bored and think to drive to the mall, remove every book in a section (say 200 books), then place them back on the shelf with the pages out instead of the spine out. I’m sure you’re unemployed. If I found out you had an interview I would take the day off and tell your interviewer about your fucked up past time. You hate a book/author. I get it. I hate people too, right now it’s you.

Is it some sort of cause? You want books you deem poorly written or inappropriate off the shelves? Turning the sex books around doesn’t make people not want to buy sex books. It makes booksellers swear like sailors and look around for someone to set on fire.

You want a cause? How about the destruction of the rainforest for fucks sake!? Honestly when was the last time you and your damn opinions thought about the rainforest? Look at how many question marks you are making me use. It’s fucking ridiculous. Think of all those tress and unknown species dying slow, painful deaths, you could care about that. In fact I don’t care what you decide to have opinions about, just do more than make my job harder.

I love it when people have strong opinions, like me on this subject, but really you’re going to use up all your angry energy to turn some books around? Hate Nicky Sparks and Stephi Meyer all you want. Write them a fucking letter, they don’t know you turn their books around. Organize a protest about shitty books, volunteer at a school and get kids to read quality books, have a hunger strike and don’t eat until your local book store removes all the titles you don’t like. Then you can die your own slow, painful death. Remember the rainforest?

In the meantime take your passive aggressive grumpy little hands off of the books and find something else to look do. 

Sincerely,

Tiffany (and Kelly)

Dear Nicholas Sparks,

You melodramatic, romance writing, motherfucker. Who the fuck do you think you are!? Jesus, fuck! I can’t even think straight after having read your interview with USA Today. I will say I’ve never read any of your books. Because I treasure my brain cells. If I’m going to kill them off, it will be with vodka not shit writing. 

I can say that about your writing because I have seen the plots to your novels turned movies. Unless “The Last Song” has some crazy twist where aliens invade and that’s how Miley’s character’s grandfather dies, it’s shit writing. It’s been done before and not by classical Greek writers. You aren’t Euripides. You aren’t Sophocles. You aren’t Shakespeare reincarnated and you can’t pick your OWN NOVEL when asked what is your favorite tale of youth. I already hated you for putting this crap on shelves and in movie theaters, but I figured the public deserves what it pays for. That interview pushed me over the edge.

From the interview: Asked what he likes in his own genre, Sparks replies: “There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do.” Really? No one writes “love stories”? How about Atonement by Ian McEwan? Or Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. The second book is beautifully written, I am currently in the middle of the story and Patchett’s writing switches view points effortlessly. Unlike your stilted descriptions:

When they reached a quiet point in the conversation, Garrett leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. He closed his eyes and seemed to be savoring a silent moment for himself. While he was doing that, Theresa quietly put the used plates and napkins back into the basket to keep them from blowing into the ocean. When Garrett was ready, he rose from his seat.

BORED! “Seemed to be savoring”? “While he was doing that”? What a terrible transition. How about “As he relaxed” or ” While he took a moment for himself” or “Seeing him pull slightly away from her after opening up so much, Theresa busied her hands by putting away the used plates.” It isn’t that hard, and we all know how much you like writing to be easy. Jackass.

Back to other writers who do what you do. There is also Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry, but the movie adaptation won an Oscar, which none of your novels to movies have done. So really, he doesn’t do what you do, he does it better. Nicholas Evan’s The Horse Whisperer falls into your non-romance love story genre. Looks like you aren’t as alone as you thought.

My heart races as I think about your Cormac McCarthy comments. He doesn’t deserve your wrath. You hold back on James Patterson, but not the author of The Road. The man won a Pulitzer. Was the story too difficult for you to finish? Were the words too long? There is a love story in it as well, too bad he didn’t let a 17 year-old name the characters, maybe then he would be more of your caliber. I’m sure setting the novel on a beach would have been more your style as well. If only the apocalypse had left some better scenery. 

I think Roger Ebert put it best: To be sure, I resent the sacrilege Nicholas Sparks commits by mentioning himself in the same sentence as Cormac McCarthy. I would not even allow him to say “Hello, bookstore? This is Nicholas Sparks. Could you send over the new Cormac McCarthy novel?” He should show respect by ordering anonymously.

Keep your ego in your pants from now on will you? Your opinions on yourself are the only thing that disgust me more than your novels.

Sincerely,

Kelly