Post

I spent a few years in an architecture (buildings, not code) class and one thing we did a little of was critiques. Nothing made me better faster than getting torn to shreds over a design. Yeah, the first one sucks, but once you accept it, the criticisms are beautiful things.

It's can be a delicate subject

'here is my 490 page slidedeck on everything wrong with you' - this is, generally not the behavior of a casual friend!

I go with, "Not for me right now."

OMG I had no idea! Are they on audiobook?!! I I will definitely check Audible and add them to my wish list! Now I am very embarrassed!

Well, I totally enjoyed the one book of yours I read so far and I have enjoyed your posts here, but a whole lot of writers are less...easy-going, shall we say. Or maybe the term is "less grounded"

I once told a friend of mine that I knew his band's music was good, but it wasn't for me. I'll never make that mistake again. I heard about it for years. Should have just said, "yeah, you guys are great." Lesson learned

I must confess to not having read any Scalzi but here we go! 😀

A friend of mine has a great phrase she uses about things she tried and didn’t enjoy. “We bounced off it.” It sounds so gentle, so accidental.

Honestly, if someone doesn’t like YOUR writing I think something is wrong with them 😂

My husband reads your books, I read your skeets.

right - 'not for me' is when others have an opinion, 'not any good' is when I do.

I often call those people good editors.

As I say in one book or another, Stephen King is more successful at his writing than I can ever hope to be, but he does not write for me — horror fiction is not my frisson. And he knows that. When he’s writing, he is not thinking about how to please people for whom horror is a horror. #Audience

Just had a tech guy come through our new house & chatted about how he had found a Sci-fi writer he enjoyed. I told him that there is another most enjoyable writer: John Scalzi. When he asked about which book titles, I answered "all of them". I did mention a handful of titles to get him started. 😃

"It's not for me" is a very powerful phrase. If more people understood that 'not everything is supposed to be for them' we'd have a not less aggressive discourse about media.

I have tried books by several authors, new to me, because I enjoyed following them on here. In most cases 'not for me' about summed it up. But it is good to try something new, it is good to support writers, and it is good to occasionally discover something that absolutely IS for me.

I have enjoyed each of your books and I really like the posts about your dog, but it has been a while…

*Redshirts... le sigh

Not everything is for everyone and that is the beauty of it!

There are plenty of objectively good, even great, authors who I just don't vibe with. Big obvious example, Herman Melville. Pretty sure most would agree Moby Dick is an amazing literary achievement, that said after about 100 pages I DNF it because it just isn't for me.

as well, i am sure that authors deal with readers liking some pieces of work but not others. i really liked the first two books of Old Man’s War but found i lost interest in the later ones. But still know John is a brilliant writer. thoroughly enjoyed other books he has written. Android Dream is A+

I feel the same way. I'd like people to be tactful when they don't like my work, but I don't want them to lie to me.

"Let the people like the thing" is high on the list of lessons I wish I'd learned much earlier.