Warning: What Follows is a Rant--Proceed with Caution

So my internet connection is lagging, and my outraged crusader personality is rising and my sleep is just not doing, so I'm gonna just take a moment to rant about a little “thing” that really bothers me.

While I was performing my daily quota of obsessive cyber-stalking the blog of one of my favorite authors (http://www.ilona-andrews.com/news/publishing-news/librarians-vs-bloggers) I was alerted to a subject that I guess in making the rounds of book-oriented blogs around the web. It's a whole whole blogger vs. librarians thing that is quite interesting and that I have lots of thoughts on, but is not actually what this post is written about.

Now, I love my blog and I love other peoples' blogs. And heck, I love librarians. I've had good and bad experiences with both sources. BUT I DON'T RELY ON ANYONE TO TELL ME WHAT TO READ AND WHAT NOT TO. I don't pay any attention to recommendations when I look for new books to read. I don't really know why. If you buy me a book, I'll read it. Give me a book, I'll read that too. That just manners. But I buy books based on personal interest and individual discovery and research. Book s are the only thing I'm like this with. Just know this so that you might understand that I am utterly and totally nonplussed by this whole thing. If there was a box marked N/A I would be checking it right about now. The following is as close to being objective as I can get. I want everyone reading this to know that I am absolutely not intending to actually talk about this bloggers vs. librarians debate. THIS IS NOT WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT. I only use this as an example.

Anywho, as I was perusing the comments and searching out more information on the matter (see, I'm sane and not creepy at all, I'm so cas' using big words my obsession isn't unhealthy...) I noticed that there seemed to exist an opinion or rather a trend really in the responses and arguments; that one side was better than the other. Both people and sides were being subjected to what I have come to think of as “quantification.”

Quantification is a name I have given to phenomena that I have observed as a grown up member of a society, where judgment and jockeying for a scrap of superiority is an accepted, and sometimes encouraged, practice. It usually goes like this:

Person A: This is this and it is good because of reasons.

Person B: I have a this, too, and it is more good because of these better reasons.

It can also go like this:

Person A: This is this.

Person B: Your this is so much good because of these reasons I don't have.

The sort of root of the argument discussed in the above blog post on author(s) Ilona Adrews site, not the root of the issue that started the argument, is that recommendations for what to read come from two different sources—blogger or librarians and that one side is the superior and deserves more.... something. I admit, I got more and more sidetracked by my brain than by the actual post and detail on what was going down. As I read I realized that what was really getting my goose about the whole issue was the need for the arguers or quantify their book recommendation source with a title and thus assign a certain amount of merit to it.

I think the end of Ilona Andrews' blog post says it all “I am so tired of this mentality of bloggers vs authors vs booksellers vs librarians vs readers. Can it just be about books?”

Why do you need to argue about which source is more valid? When did reading books become some sort of competition. Honestly, I think that behavior suggests more about your own need to be validated than the slighted honor of what you are so violently defending.

I mean, you sound like you discuss books like “I got this book recommended to me by an industry professional the librarian/an acclaimed internet book reviewer so you know it must be a superb piece of literature, regardless of whether or not I really enjoyed it”

I feel real bad for your friends if you talk to them about books like this. I have devoted two years of my life and many thousands of dollars to studying and reading books and even I don't talk about books like this. If I do, I should wonder why someone hasn't performed an act of charity and smacked me in the face by now, or checked for an alien mind control device.

Why can't you just walk up to your book buddy and say “Hey, I got this recommendation for this cool book. It was really good, you might enjoy it.”

Because honestly, where you got the recommendation doesn't matter, so long as it was a book you read and were able to form an opinion about or derive some amount of enjoyment from. Read your books, and share your joy if you feel like it.

I see this issue of quantification jump up in a lot of different areas of life. The whole “Strong Female Character” issue is another bug example of it.

Every time I see this term thrown around I think to myself—Hey, character creators, how about you stop worrying about writing a strong “female” character and just write strong characters? Why does gender need to dictate the need for strength to be emphasized or contrived? Shouldn't everyone be strong, regardless of gender? Aren't there all kinds of ways of being strong? Because I'm a girl, does that mean that I have to be “female strong?” I can't just be strong?

Or when you talk terms of success. I've been told several times in my life that I should be so proud of my accomplishments because of where I come from. Usually this is uttered in contrast to the accomplishments of another individual. It feels like a slap in the face every time.

First of all, why is someone other than myself passing judgment upon what I have done? It is or for me and me alone to determine what things in my life are worthy of pride and what are worthy for shame. I don't need you comparing my latest report card to yours or anyone else to feel good or bad about it. Do my accomplishments mean more because I'm poor? Do they mean more because I've battle my demons for them? Hasn't everyone had to battle to get what the want and need? Haven't the fought just as hard for their successes, had to suffer his or her own adversities?

Why are you telling me that my suffering makes me somehow more worthy than another? Suffering is suffering, and success is success. My business is mine, go mind yours.

Why does our society feel the need to label each and every little thing into an hierarchy of value? It is or it isn't.

If you go to a professor and hand in an assignment that's only half done and tell them “Considering my background, this is a really big accomplishment,” you are still going to be a big fat F, and probably some wired looks next class.

Or if you go to work with a presentation that is only half complete, but tell your boss that it doesn't matter that it's only half complete because the sources you drew from were really accomplished and popular personalities, so they are twice as effective as a complete presentation ever could be, you are probably going to end the day cleaning out your desk or at least taking some time off to go talk to a nice doctor who specializes in mid-life crises.

Quantification has no practical value, and really is usually a feeble and ham-handed attempt at interpersonal communication at best or a thinly veiled bullying tactic to make someone feel better than someone else.

The in-betweens do nothing, they just allow fat-headed douchebags to feel better about their own mediocrity so that they can have happy little dreams when they go to sleep at night. Assigning merit or superiority to another doesn't matter at all in the real world. Your quantification of me and my quantification of you only really matter to the person doing the quantifying and that is really kinda sad.

So yeah.

This rant is over I think. Sorry about how little sense this probably makes.