I never did get around to answering this week’s Booking Through Thursday question yesterday. However, when I glanced at it today I knew that I just could not pass it up.

I was looking through books yesterday at the shops and saw all the Twilight books, which I know basically nothing about. What I do know is that I’m beginning to feel like I’m the *only* person who knows nothing about them.

Despite being almost broke and trying to save money, I almost bought the expensive book (Australian book prices are often completely nutty) just because I felt the need to be ‘up’ on what everyone else was reading.

Have you ever felt pressured to read something because ‘everyone else’ was reading it? Have you ever given in and read the book(s) in question or do you resist? If you are a reviewer, etc, do you feel it’s your duty to keep up on current trends?

Sadly enough, I’d have to say that yes, I have felt the pressure to read the currently “in” books. Ironically enough, I remember reading and following the Twilight series before it became popular. Very weird feeling. My most notable cave-in occurred with the Harry Potter series however. When the Harry Potter series first started I remember writing it off in favor of series that I was actively hooked on, specifically Laurell K Hamilton’s works. I read the summary for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and looked at the wonderfully illustrated cover and passed on it. I thought it was likely to be aimed more at the little kids and I was heavily leaning in the dark fantasy and horror genres at the time.

It wasn’t long before the series took off and there was a lot of hype around it. I was in high school at the time and I couldn’t help but to be a bit put off by the sudden fad that surrounded the reading of the HP books. Eventually there was a sale in one of those book clubs, one of those buy X-amount and get Y-amount free, kind of things. I remember getting the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter collection in three hardback volumes and being able to get all of the [at the time] current Harry Potter books free. If I didn’t like the books then it didn’t matter. I didn’t spend money on them and I could probably sell them on Amazon or Ebay easily.

But as you all know, I am a big Harry Potter fan, so it’s pretty obvious that I actually fell in love with the series, despite its flaws. There have been other instances where I caved and some where I avoided following the masses.

With regards to being a book reviewer, I try not to follow the trends so much as to review a variety of different books from different genres. I have my favorite genres, that’s readily obvious when you look at the numbers next to each category on my book blog, but I try to provide an assortment regardless. My aim is to find new authors and new books constantly, and by reviewing these titles, I hope to bring them to the attention of the masses.

That’s not to say that I won’t review popular books, I’ve done it several times. However, I try to limit it to books where I feel that I can contribute a different on contrasting view. Despite liking the HP series, I only reviewed one of the books, Deathly Hallows, despite having been doing book reviews on the blog and my personal site long enough to have reviewed at least three of them.

If the book is popular, in one of the genres I read, and I feel my review would differ from the majority that I might have already seen, then I’ll gladly post it. I want to provide a voice that will be heard and not just lumped in with the crowd. Not to mention the fact that no one wants to read the same thing over and over.

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