If You Have Nothing Nice To Say Don’t Say Anything At All?

I have heard this mantra most of my life, and I’m wondering if I necessarily agree with it? How boring would life be if people never fell out, never made up, were always unscrutably polite to each other, and the whole world was all raindrops and roses? HELLO? THIS IS NOT LIVING!!! Falling out, being bitchy, and generally misbehaving, is part of life, and I realise that there will be bleeding heart liberals out there who may (or may not) read this post and think, ‘what the f*k, but hey this is just the way I think, life would be BORING if everybody was nice to everybody else, all of the time, yech!!!

On most of the lists that I’m on, everybody is sooooo polite, I mean come on, I cannot be the only one who sees certain posts and think, how lame is that? I know you do too, you’re just too polite to say so, and most of the time I have to admit, I too suffer from this social disease called good manners, yech!!

However, having said that, what I absolutely will NOT do is to extoll the virtues of a book that I thought was absolutely rubbish, just because I’m familiar with the author. This is where, the above rule comes into play, I say nothing! Why lie, and give platitudes that you know you don’t mean? I hear ya thinking well if you voice your opinion in a diplomatic way, you can get away with it, but really, who the hell believes that? Having been in contact with a lot of authors, I know that this bunch, are some of the most insecure people in the world, so no matter how nicely you word a negative, it’s still a negative, and will sometimes have said author crying and going through huge bouts of self doubt for the next year or so!

But by keeping quiet, am I really doing that author a favour? Would he/she not be better off, if I explained what it was about the book that I didn’t like? After all, without readers and their input, where would they be? In Unpublished Hell, that’s where! Authors feel free to comment!