In Defense of Bad Books

I’ve been a die-hard book lover since middle school. I love to read anything and everything that piques my interest. I even love going out of my comfort zone and reading things I don’t think I’ll like. So yeah, I’ve read War and Peace in its entirety. Yeah, a lot of it was boring, but I was able to give Tolstoy his props by the end.

But despite my magnanimity towards reading, even I have encountered the notorious “reading drought.” Those weeks (that, for me, once turned into months) where I have no desire to pick up a book. At the beginning of 2022, during my first year of college, I had a reading drought so horribly extended that I thought: “Do I not have the chops to be an English major?” I’m not saying that you have to constantly have a book in your hand to be a successful English major, but I will say my love for reading was the driving force behind my major choice. Suffice it to say, I was very troubled by my situation and simply wanted to unwind with a good book.

Lucky for me, I stumbled upon a good book shortly after. A book so good that I’ve since read it twice. A book that reinvigorated my love for reading so intensely that I went on to read a total of 52 books in 2022. But the funniest thing about this is that this “good book” that did so much for me is what many would consider “bad.”

It was The Love Hypothesis, author Ali Hazelwood’s debut novel. It was a New York Times best-seller — but it was also originally published online as a Star Wars fanfiction about Rey and Kylo Ren. It was a 300-something-page romcom that featured the best and worst tropes, from enemies to lovers and fake dating to endless miscommunication between the main couple. It wasn’t precisely well-written, and the tropes I mentioned carried the whole book. But I loved it.

Though every instance of miscommunication between the main characters frustrated me beyond belief, I was always jumping to turn to the next page, where someone would finally let their true feelings show, or someone would take their shirt off. That book was crack, and I was a junkie, and this is my defense for “bad” books.

But first, a slight detour.

Cut to the tail-end of 2023. The New York Times emails me a newsletter every day. Sometimes twice a day. It’s one of the perks of subscribing to their website (though I don’t actually pay for the subscription, thanks to the University of Delaware’s wallet). I digress. On December 8th, I received a headline in my inbox that piqued the interest of my inner English major: “An interview with the renowned literary agent Andrew Wiley.”

I’m not exceptionally versed in the world of famous literary agents. Still, when I see that the short blurb floating above the “Read the full interview →” button notes that one of Wiley’s clients is Sally Rooney (I read one of her books and loved it), I figure I’d give the article a quick read. So I click that little arrow, as one does, and am directed to an article by The New York Times Magazine columnist David Marchese titled “When Ruthless Cultural Elitism Is Exactly The Job.”

I thought the article was interesting. “Elitist” was indeed a word I would use to describe Wiley and his thoughts on the book publishing industry. However, I could appreciate the way he highly values sophistication in writing and condemns industry greed. Appreciation aside, though, a couple of the quotes he gave have weighed heavily on my mind ever since.

At one point, he says:

“The best-seller list is an example of success and achieving the broadest possible readership. But who’s reading you? A bunch of people with three heads and no schooling. You want to spend the day with these people? Not me, thank you.

We’re not supposed to look down our noses at pop culture anymore. Do you think that’s a phony attitude? Is there some defense of cultural elitism that you want to make? Not particularly. I suppose to a great extent I’m just guided by my taste, and that’s probably idiosyncratic and narcissistic of me. I’m not a person who would ever go to Disney World. There are a lot of people who do. I don’t necessarily think that they’re ridiculous. I just don’t share that taste.”

Then, to end the interview:

“But if you take the common reader, your best-selling books reader, and you say, look, here’s a really interesting sentence composed by a master: “Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore” — most of them say, “What are you talking about, man?” But that’s where all the pleasure lies: on a construction like that and the care of it and the accuracy of it and the delicacy of it and the power of it.

I asked you to leave me with a poem and you slipped in a dig. You can’t help yourself! [Laughs.] God, that’s terrible. Apologies, I love broad humanity — just not Disney World.”

These parts of the interview have stuck with me until now simply because I fail to believe he loves “broad humanity.” Not if, to him, “broad humanity” is made up of the “common reader,” the “best-selling books reader” — AKA “A bunch of people with three heads and no schooling.” Sorry, Wiley, but you can’t just drop all those disses on the average reader and excuse yourself by saying you don’t like Disney World. Some of us have never even been to Disney World! (Yes, I’m bitter about it!)

I digress again. The point of all of this is, after reading this article, I’ve generated some beef with Wiley even though he doesn’t know I exist. My beef is this: I see a lot of books found on the best-seller list aren’t particularly groundbreaking pieces of fiction. Especially the ones put there by TikTok virality like The Love Hypothesis or the Empyrean series (Fourth Wing, Iron Flame), to give a more recent example of books I immensely enjoyed despite the heaps of critique they got. But the point is, despite getting the blanket label of “not good,” these romcom and romance-fantasy (romantasy, if you ask TikTok) books will have me gasping and giggling late into the night. Are the critics of these so-called “bad” books giggling late into the night? I doubt it.

Yes, Iron Flame could have spent more time in the oven before getting published, and yes, the multiple instances of miscommunication present in The Love Hypothesis might have been the only reason the book made it past 200 pages. But my days (and subsequent weeks and months) were made better by reading these books. They not only entertained me but made me pretty darn happy.

I don’t think all books on the best-seller list must be the most revolutionary piece of writing. Should they be? I don’t know. But I do know that many books people consider “good” often deal with existential themes like what it means to live, die, and everything in between, and do not serve as escapes from the everyday stresses of adulthood — reading about dragon riding and falling in love with the last person you’re supposed to in Fourth Wing, though? That’s one fun escape. So if anything other than sophistication is “bad,” then sorry, Wiley, I will keep reading “bad” books for the above reasons. I think you should, too.

Gaby Nieves