Snap Black-and-White Judgments (Book: I Love Brock Turner)

[gali]

Feeling strongly about a book is good, yes. But I don't think this strength is exactly what was hoped for lol.

lol Indeed.

I also don't believe in unconditional love by the way, but I still thought it was a good book with a great message, and liked it.

[bookscorp_mumbai]

Hi Scott,

I absolutely agree with you that people love to be judges and would nail a person to the cross without so much as even stepping in their shoes. This happens especially with writers. My debut novel was criticized by a reader here who is from the US and I know that you guys have had an overdose of pro boxing. Anyways, I have not read the book in question but I agree with you that things should not be judged in a haste.

Rajesh

[its a mun thing]

"Love is difficult to satiate."
This quote stick with me ever since I read it.
The very gist of this booklet is in my opinion to not cast aside empathy.
I could give two recent reads I had as example for marvelous work that left me conflicted in the terms of whether or not to feel empathy for the character.
The first one is Ishida Sui's masterpiece called Tokyo Ghoul. and if you start with "oh comics are for kids" just stop right there, because this isn't for kids. (spoiler ahead***)
In recent chapters of Tokyo Ghoul we only get the unraveled story of a serial killer nicknamed "Torso" because he dismembered his victims. The guy was raised in a single father living in the woods in a tent "household". The fathers main focus was to get food for himself. Torso was never educated because he was a ghoul (ghouls are human flesh eating monsters) so they didn't mix with humans. Then one day Torso met a girl who was human, but became his one and only friend. taught him to read and they had pretty mainstream teen relationship. when she was running away from home Torso let her stay in his tent because his father was nowhere to be seen for months!
plot twist is that the father comes home and thinks the girl is his sons prey so he hauls her and dismembers her, whereas Torso wakes up and discovers the gruesome scene.
he blacks out and kills his father and develops a craving to regain his friend by the same manner because after years the only thing he remembers is the scent so he replicates the murder like he saw his father do it.
but Torsos fate is met by a half ghoul called Mutsuki that Torso kidnaps and dismembers (they have regenerating powers so they wont die of something like loosing a limb.) but he doesn't know that Mutsuki is not the average sweet quiet girl but a repressed mass murderer who was abused by her family and pardoned of the murder after she repressed her memory and decided to join the anti-ghoul forces, altering her gender to be taken seriously.
so after Mutsuki has had enough blacks out and kills Torso in a manner it isn't comparative and Torsos way of murder looks like a kitten play with a feather compared to this.
So there's the real dilemma as to whom do we should feel empathy? to Torso who "wasn't taught better" or Mutsuki who "did it to survive"
the other recent read I have is Stephen King's Rose Madder.
the main characters husband is an overly abusive and manipulative brute. he has this sentence to "I wanna talk with you, but up real close." which comes from his own father who was a drunkard and abused him when he was little tormenting him the same way. so should we hate him too for abusing his wife or should we pity him for not knowing anything better and not being taught and raised better?
like Scott said in his book love is really hard.

[Ale87]

I read the book and I thought it was compelling. Even in my review I stated that one shouldn't rely on reviews alone rather than reading the actual thing, because honestly the reviews I first saw had me thinking why should I read this. But I downloaded it because the proceeds are going to a good cause. Sorry you gonna always have a little bad , hopefully the good out weighs it

[chocomeiske]

Im guilty of judging books by their covers but not to the point where I would leave a review or a remark without knowing what it's about or the content. To do so is not only ignorant but irresponsible in my humble opinion.

[erezb1994]

[quote]erezb1994 It depends what "it" is. A lot of people seem fundamentally upset about the broader problem of the thousands upon thousands of rapes that occur each year and a justice system that allegedly gives inconsistent unfair sentences, giving some non-violent people long sentences and than rapists a slap on the wrist, ultimately releasing dangerous violent people un-rehabilitated to harm yet more victims. That is a problem that Brock alone did not cause. So my point is that we scapegoat him for that kind of thing to excuse our own inaction to fix problems like that and like the 18,000 who starve to death every day. If it is a reasonable reaction, I wouldn't call it hate. It only seems like hate to me when it is unreasonably put on a single person particularly as way of excusing our own fault. So to anyone who says he--or whoever is the alleged scapegoat of the day one day--is not a scapegoat because he is very guilty of something, I would ask that person, what have you done to stop rape? What have you done to help victims? Is there more you could do but don't? Are you perfect? If not, why not work on yourself instead of hating some single guy on the TV? Why not try to behave more lovingly by doing more for charity or to help victims instead of spending any time or resources doing whatever hate entails?
[quote]

I do do things to help victims, I spread the word about the horror of the bad people, anywhere online, as well as in life when I hear people say I'm gonna f-word that chick, or that's a nice piece of a-word, I go and tell them that they are jerks and that they should be incarcerated for the things they say or at least that they are the problem of this world. But it's funny that you never hit my point of the other thing I said about terrorists and Israel, my home country and Jews my people, especially when you wrote that terrorists shouldn't be hated, and did you get to the part where I said hitler should be hated? Do you disagree? Scott you really should read the whole paragraph, just like I read your book!!

[Joy Boudreau]

I did read this book - every word. Parts of it, I agreed with, and parts, I thought went overboard, a little too reactionary. The main message appears to be "if everyone would just start loving everyone, the world would be a better place," however, if you actually read through the whole thing, the real message is "instead of jumping on hate bandwagons all the time, everyone needs to pitch in and do something to improve the world." Love, not hate, is the answer to the world's problems. The author DOES point out that people still do evil things, and they need to be justly punished, and the legal system is how that is supposed to work. However, mostly the book seems to be reactionary against all the hate. Not to mention, he doesn't account for the corruption within the legal system. In a Utopian society, the author's ideas would work. However, we are not in a Utopian world. (anyway, if we were, I imagine we wouldn't have to be dealing with gross evil acts, yes?) I do appreciate the author's putting his money where his mouth is... by publishing this book, he is hoping to not only spread the message of love, not hate, but he is also hoping to send money to a charity dedicated to helping sexual abuse victims. This is actually living his message, so I appreciate the instance of transparency rather than hypocrisy.

[bookowlie]

Greenstripedgiraffe -Well said.

[gali]

Greenstripedgiraffe -Well said.

[Fernando Neves]

I agree. It is absurd judge without reading. Best regards

[Joy Boudreau]

Thanks, bookowlie and gali!

[Gotta Book]

All I am getting is a Page Not Found at Amazon.

[P_hernandez]

Amazon removed it and banned it, jax2

[Gotta Book]

Just since yesterday? And I just got an email about it this morning.

[Joy Boudreau]

apparently. Well. I wouldn't recommend it as a "good read" for abuse survivors, but neither did i think it worth being banned! LOL