Follow Friday

Welcome to Follow Friday! I seriously thought this week would never end. TGIF!


Question: Have you ever bought a book because of a bad review? 


Yes, I am proud to say I have. And you know what else? I bought a book that only had 2 stars on Goodreads once! I heard that gasp too, don't think I didn't! 


The thing is, to me, Goodreads is a great tool. An amazing tool, actually. It's entertaining and informative and I freely admit to spending ten times the amount of time on Goodreads than Facebook  (stop gasping, I already know I'm weird for an 18 year old). But the thing is, I don't base my purchases solely on what I read on Goodreads. 

See, ever since I was little I would wander around my local bookstore, picking out books that looked or sounded interesting. I'd write them down, and each time I bought one I'd cross it off. Each time I found something new I'd add it to the list. Sound familiar? I had my own little Goodreads system going before the day that faithful google search took me there. Nine year old me was like this with her little filing system:


And it felt good guys. I was an awesome little secretary with all my awesomeness - I don't care if that doesn't make sense. But my system wasn't flawless - I did end up getting some books that weren't the greatest. 


Then I started using Goodreads and life was awesome. It was great! All I had to do was search a book's name and I could see what thousands of people thought about it. Awesome. But sometimes I'd end up buying a book based on people's recommendations and it was like "how did this have a 4.5 star rating? It sucks!" Then I bought a book that had a horrible rating, and it turned out to be one of my favourite books of all time - which is why I don't base my purchases only on Goodreads ratings anymore. Me buying a book happens like this:

- Wander around the bookstore for a few hours
- Pick up any books that interest me
- Lay all the books out side-by-side
- Read the summaries on the back
- Put back the ones that don't interest me
- Open up the books that remain and read the first couple pages
- Buy the ones that make me want to keep reading


Sometimes, if I'm unsure, I'll check the GR page for the book. But only if I'm unsure.


Anyways, this is how I found Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. I hadn't been very close attention to the whole debacle until I happened to read a copy of the petition set out by that insane guy whose name I forget and won't bother looking up because he isn't worth a millisecond of my time. I read that thing and went, "what the hell? Is this guy a rapist or something? How does he possibly get aroused by this stuff?" 
And like thousands of bloggers, I went out and bought a copy of Speak. And guess what? After reading it, I looked like this:

And I thought about the guy who had the audacity to bash that book, and I got MAD. Because that book did NOT deserve to get bashed. And he did it anyway. 

ANYWAYS. Sorry for the long post guys. Have a good weekend!