Book Wars

Have you ever noticed how certain book series lovers tend to turn on others? For example; a lot of fan pages for both the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series. Now I’m a fan of both but quite a few of the Harry Potter fan pages that I’ve “liked” are regular Twilight bashers. One page even goes so far as to have an album in their photo section that is labelled “Twilight Bashing? Yes :D”. Now I understand that not everyone loves Twilight and that’s fair enough. But to go out of your way to hate on something that much is a bit uncalled for. A lot of Harry Potter fans claim that Stephanie Meyer is a terrible author and that J.K. Rowling is amazing. Considering these fans don’t seem to be aware of what it takes to become a published author I don’t think they have the right to comment. As I said before not everyone likes twilight but I know plenty of people who don’t like it but they know that the more they whine about how stupid it is the more they are just drawing attention to it. And I also understand that some twilight fans can be a little grating in the ways that they express their love of the series. But not everybody loves Harry Potter either and yet you see more pages and people that complain about twilight. That being said Harry Potter has had its share of complainers. In different parts of the world Christian groups have tried to get the series banned from schools simply because it contains witchcraft, never mind the fact that it’s a fictional series......

As a budding author it just shows that you can’t please everyone all the time. It also reminds me of I quote I read once: “Better to write for yourself & have no public than to write for the public & have no self." ~Joseph Conway. And he’s right. I’ve found in the past that if you focus too much on trying to please your audience you often drive them further away.   But I have to say: Kudos to both J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer who only seem to focus on the fans and the joy the novels give them rather than on the haters that try to stir up trouble. As a writer though, I do understand it can sometimes be helpful when people critique your work but only when they can do this in such a way that it helps the progression of your work rather than hindering it.

And it's not just Harry Potter stars hating on Twilight. I've seen people that are Lord of the Rings fans hating on both Harry Potter and Twilight. 

As a fan of quite a few different book series' I don't understand how people (who, considering they read a lot, must be intellectuals) can stoop to the whole "my favourite series is better than yours" rubbish. Why can't we as intellectuals all get over the differences? Not everyone is going to love the same stuff. But those that spend all their time talking about how much they hate something are still talking about it. And, for that matter, still drawing attention to the thing that they're supposed to hate. But I don't understand why people have to hate on things in the first place.

If you don't like something, fair enough. But don't waste time trying to convince fans why you think its stupid/bad/waste of time or energy because all it does is start an argument. 

People we have better things to do than fight among ourselves about which book is better.......