Book Snobbery

Recently, I read the first two books in Kimberly Derting's The Pledge series.

Here's the blurb from Goodreads.com: "In the violent country of Ludania, the classes are strictly divided by the language they speak. The smallest transgression, like looking a member of a higher class in the eye while they are speaking their native tongue, results in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina has always been able to understand the languages of all classes, and she's spent her life trying to hide her secret. The only place she can really be free is the drug-fueled underground clubs where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. It's there that she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy named Max who speaks a language she's never heard before . . . and her secret is almost exposed.

Charlie is intensely attracted to Max, even though she can't be sure where his real loyalties lie. As the emergency drills give way to real crisis and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country's only chance for freedom from the terrible power of a deadly regime."

       I would never have picked up something like this for myself (I got the book as a gift.) Even just from the blurb, I could tell that the book would mostly be about the relationship between Charlie and Max, which would undoubtedly be romantic. It's not that I don't like romance in books, I do, I just don't like the book to be ALL romance- I would prefer some action. Also, I know they say you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but I do. I usually shy away from books with pictures of girls making pouty faces on the cover. Just from a first impression, The Pledge was the type of book I tried to avoid.
        But I started to read the book anyway, just to see what it was like. It was weird at first- it's set in the future, but seems like it's trying to be in the past. The writing at times gets overly formal, and the dialouge is corny and generally unrealistic. I kept reading though, because the world the characters live in is really cool, and it was kind of like a guilted pleasure. However, whenever I explained the book to one of my friends, I would preface it with "It's so bad." So why did I keep reading it?
         I think sometimes we can forget what reading is supposed to be. A lot of times, I get so caught up in the quality of the writing, I completely forget about the quality of the story, and isn't that what books are supposed to be about? The truth is, the writing in The Pledge is mediocre at best, but the stroy and the world is so unbelievably imaginative, it kept me reading bated breath into the early hours of the morning. There is so much more to it than what's in the blurb, and I'm really glad I read it.
         I guess what I'm saying is that book snobbery will only make reading boring. If we only ever read the most intelligent, well- written, sophisticated books, we would never discover books like this. Some books can have all those traits, and that's great, but not all books have to be like that. Sometimes, the best books are lacking, but we love them anyway. Reading is supposed to be fun, so we should just pick whichever books interest us.