My experience has been that a large majority of books that get hyped on social media and make the rounds as a hot book-club sort of read… are terrible. Whatever process causes a book to reach that point appears to have no connection to how good it is.

Taste, ah, varies.

This has been a thing for my whole life, though probably made worse by social media. But I remember as a teenager a mentor telling me to be skeptical of "books that are read a lot by people who don't read a lot." But not to dismiss them entirely. There have been some good books on oprah's list or whatever and I'm sure there are some good ones coming across tiktok too.

There is also non-literary value of doing the culturally resonant thing while it's relevant. It was fun to watch game of thrones when everyone was watching it, it was fun to play elden ring when everyone was playing it, it's fun to read acotar when everyone is reading it. Not everything has to stand alone on its own merits, social participation is a value too.

It's like this with everything. Hyped movies are trash, hyped music is trash. I made fun of hipsters in the early 2010s but at this point the mainstream is such a cesspool you have to really hunt to find good, authentic art.

Yep. Scifi and Fantasy reads that break out mainstream these days seem to be universally below average. More and more consumers are demanding less which weirds me out. They want sexless, romanceless, conflict free drivel that just regurgitates feel good memes without any introspection or complex thought.

I straight up dont give people recommendations if they mention liking a subset of authors who are known slop peddlers.