Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: If you read a book you ended up hating, would you stay away from future books by that author, or would you give them a second chance?

This would probably depend on why I hated a book.  If it was something that seemed fundamental to the writer (bad writing, a tendency towards dysfunctional relationships…) I’d be more likely to stay away.  An author who writes stilted dialogue is likely to have that persist across books.  On the other hand, if the issue seems to be specific to that book (irritating main character, disappointing ending…) I’d be more likely to try again.

There are authors I love who have also written books that I hated–or at least, strongly disliked.  Cynthia Voigt’s A Solitary Blue is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read, and yet I dropped her Jackaroo halfway through.  Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series is THE best series I’ve found in the last ten (fifteen?) years, and yet I haven’t much liked anything else I’ve tried from her.  I love Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, and was hideously disappointed by Heartless.  In all these cases, I read the book I liked first, which then led me on to the less satisfying ones–but they’re clear evidence that one bad book doesn’t make really good books impossible.

So perhaps that means I ought to give disappointing authors another chance.  But that has been known to burn me!  I’ve read three books by E. D. Baker, and all three had exactly the same problem (shallow characters with lack of emotional life).  I should have learned my lesson after The Frog Princess, but The Wide-Awake Princess and A Question of Magic had such intriguing premises!!  But never again.  And Meg Cabot has gone forever on my black list after the Abandon Trilogy (well, her books–she’s probably perfectly nice).

I guess how this really plays out is that if I disliked a book, I won’t be seeking out other books by the same author (unless they were previously amazing).  If I somehow encounter another book by them anyway, I’ll be wary but might be willing if there’s something about it that overcomes the bad indicators.

Do you revisit authors who have disappointed you?  Or are there just too many other books out there to gamble again?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Do you re-arrange and move books around on the shelves or move books off of your bookshelves to another area after a certain amount of time or do you just leave them the way they are?

Some day, perhaps, I will have great wide expanses of bookshelf space, with plenty of room for all my books, with space to keep growing on through the rest of my life.  Then, perhaps, I will never need to rearrange my books.  For now, though, my books end up periodically rearranged in the endless quest to fit more in.  Probably every six months or so I do some reshuffling because new books have filled up spaces and I need a more efficient arrangement.

I don’t often fundamentally move my books.  Since I moved into my apartment I’ve had essentially the same general system.  A fiction section, a scifi/fantasy section, a children’s section, and a handful of shelves for specific authors.  But books are occasionally turned sideways or moved about within the larger framework.  I recently separated out my growing number of psychology books into their own grouping, and some books have migrated back and forth between the scifi/fantasy section and the children’s section, depending on relative space.

I also may have purchased a separate (small!) bookcase for L.M. Montgomery books since moving into this apartment…

Once in a while I come up with a better organizational scheme (as with the psychology ones) and move books accordingly, but mostly book movement is compelled by space constraints.  And when some day there’s just no possible configuration to fit everything in?  Well, I suppose I’ll have to move then!