Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Reviewing versus Reader Response 

I enjoyed this video. Five stars! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 😁 Also, you have convinced me to read The Parable of the Sower. Cheers!

This is one of my top 5 novels and I have a long history with the book. I first read the book when it came out in November 1993. I was 22 years old at that time and it blew me away. I had not read any book like that at that time. I have read the book two more times once in my mid 30s and most recently in my late 40s. I’m 52 now. Butler’s vision is dark indeed but the characters and Lauren’s belief in Earthseed is why I have read this novel multiple times in my life. This is the only novel I have argued to myself about what she envisioned with and enjoyed it at the same time. Glad you did a video on one of Butler’s best works.

I read Parable of the Sower when it came out in 1993, as my mother was (or rather, is, as she's still alive) an Octavia Butler fan. I had a habit of picking up books off my parents' shelves and I had read the Xenogenesis series front to back several times and loved it (Adulthood Rights in particular). That said, as a 14-year-old boy, I struggled with the book because the post-apocalyptic setting felt too close to reality for me to daydream idly about in the same way I had her other works. It's probably a good thing it would have been another three years until I got on the internet, and nothing like Goodreads existed at that time because I shudder to think what my teenage self would have rated the book at that time. Thinking about the issues of Goodreads does make me wonder if there's wisdom in the way Rotten Tomatoes provides both an aggregation of professional reviews and fan reviews. There are certainly many cases of TV/movies that the critics like, but the general public seems mediocre on (The Last Jedi) and works that the public seems to love but critics do not (Super Mario Brothers). As you note, reviewers and critics are expected to engage with media that isn't always personally to their tastes. In contrast, marketing often ensures that people who wouldn't enjoy a work stay far from it. I think this helps explain, for example, why Will Wight's Cradle series (past the first two books) generally rates far higher than a lot of classics within speculative fiction. By the third book, the only remaining audience left are those who loved the first two books. In contrast, once something becomes a "classic" in some sense, lots of people will pick it up just to see what the buzz is about, and find it's not to their tastes - confusing this for being "bad."

You lost me at not liking salmon 😏. Another great video on the different types of “reviews”. I really enjoy how you dissect the text to demonstrate how word choice is so important to the story. Cheers.

You are correct. I was conflating my enjoyment of the book with the writing. Written in first person as a young girl going through the events described, it makes sense in the way it is written. The story was great, but I personally didn't like the writing style. I was hoping for something more to flesh out the world that was being presented, which would have had to been done differently and in third person most likely. The world described in "The Road", for example, is similarly bleak, but the writing, even though sparse, is descriptive and beautiful. That's just personally what I prefer. I did rate the book 4 stars on Goodreads because I intuitively understand that it is very good and my personal preferences shouldn't mar that.

This makes me feel terribly guilty over the occasional attempt at a Goodreads review I've made. Not necessarily guilty enough to change my ways though. My opinions and feelings, after all, are based on objective fact! But seriously speaking, it does get very difficult to deal with something quantitative like the star rating system when you're fresh off reading something that you really enjoyed. On one hand it would probably be better to wait for the high from that read to die down before you write the review, but on the other you're liable to forget the details as you move on to the next thing, and should write the review while everything is fresh in your mind, even if personal feelings get overwhelming. No idea how professional critics do their jobs, really. Although Roger Ebert's reviews were always full of his own experience and occsasional rambling about unrelated things and he had a pretty good career...

One of my favorite things to read in a review for something I am interested in is "not a fan of the genre; 2 stars." I just want to ask: "well what if someone liked that genre, did it do things well at least? How was it written? Why do you think it was written in that way?" Etc. Basically we should just ignore Goodreads, probably lol.

This was fantastic! Great job with the explanation of both reviewing criteria and the analysis of text. It's always tough trying to determine what it is about stories that gives us that sense of catharsis we are looking for. If you ever get the chance, there is a great graphic novel adaptation of Parable that was very well done. Check it out!

A.P did your books make it to America? Curious to see which books you collect!

No video in weeks? Hope you're doing ok AP!

This all makes sense.