I love bad books. Popular bad books. Non-fiction bad books. Any bad book is worth a read every once in a while.
Bad books aren’t objectively bad in my opinion just books that might not be for me or I even disagree with. The best bad books are the books that I want to enjoy because they’re popular or because the premise is fun. And what makes them bad is equally fluid and often just my own bias.
Why Bad Over Good?
Good books are good books. What is there to talk about? What do we even do in a Tolkein book club? Make sure everyone has read Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. Then divide the room into people who preferred the Hobbit or thought LOTR was too long but still good. Then we share the same fun facts about the extended edition of the movies?
Boring. We get it. Essential reading for the book lover.
Now a shlocky Romantasy that very clearly ripped scene from other Young Adult novels and then put the “Fuck” word or act in there (with adults of course). Now we’re talking! How many different books do you recognize? Is this transformative? Are we out of original ideas? Does the sex add anything? Is she a good writer because I felt the intended emotion even if the scene is stupid? Can I do better than this? I should try!
A proper bad book where the flaws are glaring enough that I, a simpleton, can see them and talk about them is so much fun. There’s a discussion, there’s room for disagreement, there are no stakes! There may even be diamonds in the rough….
Finding Good ideas in Bad Books
It’s no secret that I love Slavoj Zizek and his writings, but not because they’re good.
Zizek is a load of fun to read because it really is a cacaphony of references and jokes interspersed with “And now to contradict myself!” that makes it feel profound. If I was smarter I think I’d call any Zizek book the philosophy equivalent of “Finnegans Wake”. The books are non-sense but there is a hidden idea that you, the reader, must decode. Maybe you disagree with the meaning, maybe you found a different meaning than what was intended, maybe the referenced book sounds interesting so you start reading Judith Butler instead (a good author).
Bad philosophy books are stimulating in that they triggered the part of your brain that wants to “philosophize” in that you want to express why you feel the way you feel. Be it the author made a good point in a bad way or maybe they made a bad point and you want to really think out a rebuttle they will never read.
Allowing a transgressive thought to make you reflect and expound upon is the correct way to use offensive content. There are obviously exceptions to this idea in that some people write books explicitly to be useless propaganda.
Bad Books verses Unreadable Books
I think the defining feature of a bad book is that it is genuine in it’s attempt to do whatever it is trying to do.
I love Rebecca Yarros “Fourth Wing” not because it’s good fantasy (or even exceptional porn) but because it feels like she’s trying to write an entertaining book. It feels like a genuine attempt at decent world building. It’s a flawed story and the world doesn’t make any sense when you think about it trying to be anything other than an explanation for why everyone is so horny.
Zizek is living far too modestly for someone who is simply a political grifter leveraging memes and podcast interviews to sell suplaments to a guilable audience. He’s even said he’d rather write the occastional Ambrocrombe and Fitch ad if it means he’s not married to a publisher or Patreon account. And that makes his work feel more genuine. I am convinced this is how he really feels and thinks.
Now, on the other end, I’ve read a lot of political writings from people I hard disagree with. I’ve read theological works from people who seemingly just like that they are a “published author”.
I used to worry that I was easily influenced and that I would just agree with or enjoy any book because I invested the eight-ish hours it takes to read one. Then I read a book I thought was interesting, and the point was one I agreed with, but it was so painfully obvious that this author had nothing new or interesting to add. It read as if they were a high schooler who had Chat GPT write a paper on something controversial, but it was pre-LLMs and I think ChatGPT would have been more interesting.
This was the first time I found a Liberal leaning grifter since I did find their podcast and heavily pushed merch store. It was embarrassing to see.
I’ve since given a lot of people I would disagree with a chance. I read Charlie Kirk’s ghost written slog feast, Ben Shapiro’s argument-less book on “Bullies”, and a book by Glenn Beck? I guess he was a Proto-Stephen Crowder.
“Authors” like that really helped me solidify the difference in my mind between “Transgressive” and “insubstantial but I’m triggered.” They’re so hard to talk about because there is very little to pull from. I was hoping to find a real argument to look into. I was giving them a fair shot and not just be angry monologues and accusatory language without any reflection.
Every arguments seems to have been “The Libs accuse us of being classist, homophobic, racist, sexists who use slurs and dedicate all our time to making life worse for minorities, poor people, and the Libs. But by calling US fascists, they show that they are the REAL FASCISTS!” And then just a bunch of examples of times someone got punched for saying a slur in public and crying “See, free speech haters!”
I don’t want to hang on this too long. It’s just the most egregious example of “Unreadable books”.
Books are Easy to Make
Yes I know it’s not that easy, especially if you want a good publisher, but book writing is so accessible these days that anyone can be a published author in hours with an Amazon Kindle account and a ChatGPT subscription. Maybe not a Good author or even a defendable Bad Author. You’d be an awful author but an author in the technical sense.
However, it is this accessibility of writing that I think allows for a diverse range of written works to exist. We no longer have the traditional filters that ensure only good or readable books are available. And I worry that the awful authors have soured the world of reading.
It is so easy to say any book that even begins to offend is trash and should be abandoned as a “Did Not Finish”. And with authors like the ones mentioned and the AI slop farms poisoning our book supply, I can’t really blame someone for not wasting their precious time on this earth with a Bad Book.
Yet, even with my bad experiences, I love the things I’ve learned about myself and the world at large because of bad books. I will continue committing way too much time to authors who probably don’t deserve the fame or my money.
RedLetterMedia is so good.
Its just reaction content with mild reviews of movies. But I love that they're reacting to media so old in most cases that it doesn't feel gross.