Book hypes

Let’s talk about book hypes!
The first book hype I ever experienced was when I was about ten years old, and of course it was Harry Potter. All my friends were reading them. Yet for some reason, that was exactly why I was reluctant to read them. The same with Pokémon; while everyone exchanged their flippos for cards I stubbornly kept playing with paper planes and with these:

and suddenly, you're future husband is everyone.

Isn’t it strange, the feeling that you don’t want to be part of the hype? Even worse is hearing people say the following sentence and expecting me to understand them: “I used to like this one thing, but then everyone started to like it and now I don’t like it anymore”.

Seriously?

If you decide not to like something anymore (is there a switch for that that I don’t know about?) because you don’t want to become a member of a large group who like the same thing you do, aren’t you letting society dictate what you want in some twisted way? Why can’t you just stick to your opinion when you’re actually allowed to?

Anyways.
Back to the ten-year-old me: despite my reluctance to liking Harry Potter my family decided to go see the Philosopher’s Stone thinking I’d like to, and of course I loved it. And then I loved being able to talk about it with my friends and to spend many late hours reading the books.
And things seem to only have escalated with the evolution of modern communication. These days there are fanfictions about everything and everyone, girls giggle over terms like “shipping” and “OTP”, and instead of finding nerdy shirts on the “geeks” link on my Pinterest I find a bunch of hot pictures or drawings of Doctor Who, the Avengers and Sherlock. I’m almost afraid to join Tumblr, where most of this fangirling seems to be going on.
Luckily it’s not just that. Sometimes I hear about my sister’s love for Game of Thrones (yes, I know the actual title of the series is A Song of Ice and Fire) and how passionate some people are about the lore and history that is hidden in rumours and legends in the books, and it warms my heart.
I guess that in the end, it doesn’t matter what binds a group of people, as long as they find comfort and likewise minded friends through it, and as long as not being a fan of the same thing, or being a fan of another thing isn’t a reason for hating and trolling.

Which brings me to my next point. I bet you can guess what it’s going to be about. It has sparkles.
I was about sixteen years old when a friend advised me to read Twilight. And I liked it at first. I still own the first two books, although I didn’t bother with the last two (I did download them at the time).
And okay, I was a bit of a teenager desperate for love back then, but I liked them. And you wouldn’t believe how much hate ‘twilighters’ get these days. Does it really matter that the amount of twilight merchandise is ridiculous? At least there exists a stepping stone for kids that’ll make them read more. Or they’ll want to see more movies with their dreamy couple, and so discover a whole world of good movies. Did you know Kirsten Steward played in Panic Room? You know who else did? Jared Leto. And he’s also dreamy and has a knack for playing in awesome movies.
(Same for the fifty shades hype, although I mostly agree with this guy.)

On the other hand there are so many authors out there that are so damn good their books deserve to be a hype but can’t quite get there, like Robin Hobb or Patrick Rothfuss. And if you feel special and hipster because ‘you know them before they are cool’, well, shame on you. These people like their pay check just as much as any other author, and you shouldn’t keep these pearls to yourselves.

So don’t be a hater. Don’t be afraid of your taste in books, and share the love.

Until next time,

Bejoes