Now then. You may have noticed that I read a lot of books. Not quite so many as some, but significantly more than others.
And you may also have noticed that I like telling you about the books that I’ve read, either here or on Twitter or Facebook. Or, if you’re particularly unlucky, in real life.
I tend to get quite excitable about books I love, especially after a beer or two. If I’ve seen you in a pub over the past couple of years and have raved at you about a book (or two), then you’ll know exactly what I mean.
I *love* talking about books. Especially the books I love.
Sometimes I even like talking about the books I didn’t quite love so much (yeah, the killer mermaid one. Though I know of at least three people who’ve gone on to buy a copy based on me getting very over-excited about what exactly was wrong with the killer mermaid book)
Over the past couple of months there have been several occasions where I’ve been chatting with someone and they’ve paused and said
“I’m *so* sorry…”
or
“I have a bit of a confession to make…”
They didn’t like the book. The book that I loved, and talked about so much. The book that I’d recommended so hard that they’d gone and bought it.
Please, don’t ever feel you have to apologise for not liking a book, especially to me.
A book is a personal thing. You either dig it, or you don’t. A ton of people absolutely loved that killer mermaid book. More power to them, I say.
I feel it should be me apologising to you, for pimping a book at you so hard that you spent your hard-earned cash on it but didn’t love it!
Right, that’s cleared that up. Now, back to the books…
🙂
espresso coco 
I worked in a bookstore for 10 years. As you might imagine, I read a lot of books back then, and I had a LOT of opinions about them. I personally take credit for keeping one book on the shelves when our HQ told us to send them all back to the publisher. I begged my manager to let us keep the title in stock, and promised to sell at least one copy every other shift I worked. I recommended it with nearly every purchase, regardless of what the customer was buying, and always with the promise that they could read it cover to cover and if they didn’t love it, they could return it for a full refund if they sought me out to do the transaction. I sold my promised quota, and nobody ever returned it. Though, as it turned out, they didn’t all love it. When I launched into my pitch with one gentleman he stopped me to say that he had already purchased the book on my recommendation. I’m sure I fairly beamed as I asked what he thought of it. [clunk] … He did NOT like it. Not even a little. I swallowed my hurt and insisted that he bring it back for a full refund, as promised, but he said he couldn’t do that. He felt bad that he didn’t like it when I had been so delighted to recommend it.
I don’t know what the point of this story is except, perhaps, to say that I understand your post.
Note: that book, which was at one time slated for permanent removal, eventually graduated from mass market to trade paperback and eventually, years later, into a movie. I’ll take credit for that, too: the fact that it hung around long enough to become a movie, not the movie itself, which was universally panned, and received less than one star on rottentomatoes.
Ah, I suspect I know which book it is, having been recommended it by your good self many moons ago!