I just finished Bookshop by the Sea which felt like a huge rip-off. All the books about bookshops I’ve read so far have had a sharp self-awareness about books for an audience who like all sorts of books. But this one? The protagonist mentions maybe three books, never references their actual stories, and spends all their time when they talk about books about how they smell, look on shelves, and the author backs this up with weak justifications from other characters (“you always did have your nose in a book!”).
It wasn’t just the books (I did pick it up for the books, though), because she stayed very shallow with absolutely everything else in the books. Occupations characters had weren’t fleshed out, the CHARACTERS weren’t fleshed out, the drama was one-dimensional and easily solved, and even the predictable action was boring.
I absolutely hated it. I would pick it up, excited to read it only because with every page I turned I was closer to a book that would more than likely be better.
Then I read Laziness Does Not Exist which is a psychology book. Lots of studies about how our culture’s view on laziness as an action is wrong since laziness is almost always a symptom of a greater underlying problem (and not an underlying problem that’s easy to identify or make blanket statements about). It was a very interesting book that made me re-think some stuff and that’s why I like books. ;-)