Ellyn Lem's Blog

Here is a recent review for the book "Adulthood and Other Fictions."
https://ageculturehumanities.org/WP/a...

Don't ask me why, but the controversy surrounding the author Lauren Hough has elicited a strong reaction for me. If you are not familiar with what happened over the last few days, Texas-author Lauren Hough had a new memoir come out of linked-essays called, Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing. A Goodreads reviewer liked the book, gave it four stars (out of five) but soon found out that Hough did not think that rating was good enough for her "masterpiece." According to Hough's account, she tweeted, while "stoned," a hate-filled message about that Goodreads reviewer and Goodreads reviewers in general. She included that people who give four-star reviews are "assholes" who "no one likes" and said writers who didn't like her tweet were "fucking nerds on a power trip." This morning on Twitter, people were bending over backwards trying to defend Hough with pledges that they were rushing out to buy her book. I don't understand that. To me, Hough was trying to intimidate Goodreads reviewers and fellow writers to love her work and her tweets or else. Whatever excuses that others are making for Hough, she herself seems to show no remorse for her hostile, unwarranted reaction as evidenced by the NPR interview after the fact in which she seems to blame everyone but herself and today has made some "out there" parallels to rape of blaming the victim. I don't want to belabor the issue; I just want to say that reviewers on Goodreads review books because they love books; it is out of respect for authors, that some of us spend our extra free time putting our thoughts to the keyboard to wrestle with the issues in a book, the style, and many other facets. I resent an author like Hough slandering those who are sharing their perspective on the work because she did not think they were nice enough to her particular book. I am an author, too, and I want everyone to love my books as well, but not everyone is going to for a variety of reasons. I have to accept that if I put my book out in the public forum. To everyone who has read my book, thank you for taking the time. To everyone who reviews books here, you have my respect for helping other readers learn from your reading experience. You are creating a community of readers, and I am happy to be in your midst.

It is hard to believe that I have had a hard time settling into books during this Covid-crisis, but I understand from others that perhaps I am not alone. When discussing it with my mom yesterday, I sort of put my finger on the problem. With the virus being so new and feeling obligated to read about it on news sources, I didn't have good reading energy to dive into my fiction, my passion. While I was able to whiz through Writers & Lovers, other attempts fell flat, including books that I knew were excellent like The Yellow House. Right before the world shut down from the virus, I gave a talk on Station Eleven and I knew Mandel had a new book out, The Glass Hotel. Reading it, I fell back into fiction and am slowly taking small steps with familiar authors' new books to keep on going. This week it was my pleasure to settle in with Louise Erdrich. I will be review her latest The Night Watchman soon. As usual, Edrich rarely disappoints.