Musing Mondays is a weekly meme, hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker, that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ____, but…
I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: Do you like or dislike memoirs?

I don’t know exactly which prompt this fits under best, but basically I think I’m going to try reading John Green’s new book, Turtles All The Way Down. I read his other books, and while they weren’t terrible and I enjoyed some parts of them, ultimately I outgrew the stage where I enjoyed them quite quickly. I got tired of “mentally ill girl captivates boring white boy who learns stuff about life through his love of her quirkiness” and other related tropes involving teens and a mysterious lack of brown/black people…

But now I’m wondering, since John Green is or was active in the online book community (as well as others) he probably would have seen some of the criticisms of his works. Sarah J. Maas did, Maggie Stiefvater did. Maggie made apologies to her readers for the lack of POC and the insensitive handling of POC in The Raven Cycle when it was called out. Sarah J. Maas got sensitivity readers and made more efforts with her newest book. So did John Green hear his  readers and understand and try to improve?

I tried to find out from reviewers and such, but so far all I’m seeing are people who are already huge fans of his novels fangirling and people who don’t like him a bit talking about how they won’t be reading it. I think it might be too soon to find someone who can give me answers to this question I have. (If you’ve seen anyone talking about it, please please link me to it!)

So since my library has it anyway, I put it on hold. I’m behind a few people in line, but I’m in no hurry. I just want to satisfy my curiosity and since I’ve yet to see anyone posting about problematic things I figure I’ll have to read it for myself to find out if it’s better than his older books. I do genuinely hope he listened to the POC and mentally ill people and women who voiced valid criticisms of his work and decided to grow as a writer from it. We shall see. (I will say, if I don’t enjoy it or I spot problematic shit right away, I won’t be forcing myself to finish.)

Do you like or dislike memoirs?
I looooooooooove a memoir man! My favorites are celebrity memoirs, because a lot of times with them being so in the spotlight we get this idea that we already know them, but we don’t and it’s interesting to see what’s really going on with them and what they’ve been thinking during certain times of their lives. But really I’m down with any memoir, no matter who it’s about. It gives such a personal look to any event that I can’t resist.