A Rant about K. L. Walther’s Books with Taylor Swift References in Them

There has been some topics I wanted to write posts about, but never had the nerve or courage to write and publish. One of the posts is about how many Taylor Swift references in books that I’ve been reading. I don’t know why, but there are way too many references to Taylor for me to not notice… or form very strong opinions about.

I’ve been holding back because I’ve had some problems with Swifties in the past. (I don’t want to talk about it online, but I will say it didn’t happen online. It happened in real life and boy, the ones I met were not that nice.) Still, I’m at the point in time when I am so annoyed by these books I’ve been reading that I need to vent.

Before I talk about the books I read that made me upset and thoughts on them, I wanted to mention that, as much as I can complain about Taylor Swift, her career, her life choices, and all the public fights she gets into, I am complaining about the authors and their books. Even though I feel like Taylor Swift benefits in many ways from these books, I want to separate the choices the authors of these books from Taylor’s choices. It is the author’s choices to include this type of information in their books. This is what I’m angry frustrated about.

The books I most recently read that contain references to Taylor Swift are the two books by K. L. Walther. They are While We’re Young and We’re a Bad Idea, Right?. To be brutally honest, I hate them! They contain a lot of references and gossip, all about Taylor Swift. The thing is these references paint her in a very positive light. Some of these references are things I disagree with and don’t know why they are in the books in the first place. Normally, I can skip over these references and continue reading the book, which is what I was expecting from the two books I was reading.

Instead, these references are so integrated into the book that I can’t enjoy the book without skipping these references. In While We’re Young, there is a reference to a Taylor Swift song I don’t like. Yet, I had to read it because it describes how one of the main characters feels about the girl he likes. Even though I don’t care for the song, I had to read it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had any understanding of how the character feels about the character, setting them up for a relationship later on in the book. Also, the song is referenced other times in conjunction with these two characters and the love they feel for each other. To skip over this Taylor Swift reference and others like it cannot happen or else the rest of the book will make less sense.

Making it even worse is the way the references are expect the reader to not have any other option except to agree with the writer and what they wrote. It doesn’t matter if the song referenced in While We’re Young is one I don’t like because it isn’t well written, the melody isn’t appealing to me, ect. I need to blindly accept the opinion of K. L. Walther or else the her descriptive nature is lost on me. Since I do disagree with including the type of references and how they are used, the characters, to me, come across as completely delusional about reality and what the real world (Meaning the world outside the fandom of Taylor Swift) actually works and functions like. Apparently nobody listens to other music except Taylor Swift’s music? No other singer, sans the friends and other obscure references I can’t figure out, are included in While We’re Young or We’re a Bad Idea, Right?.

To be honest, reading so many books with Taylor Swift references has been difficult for me. I’m not a Swifty and I don’t have the kind of admiration Swifties would have for her. I also don’t care enough to follow her every move in order to make sense of the music she releases or any media inspired by Taylor’s life story. To be honest, I’m sick of all the books written by authors that contain jabs at someone who Taylor gets into a public fight with. Why does it seem a book isn’t getting published without a reference to Taylor’s perfect life and jabs at someone she gets into a fight with?! Am I expecting something different from the books I read that I can no longer have because of… well… Swifties are the only ones that actually read anymore? And furthermore, why are these things so appealing when nobody except Swifties can understand what is written with them?

I’m at my wits end about this. I find them in other places as well. I feel like I’m trapped in a time when everyone needs to write Swiftie approved references that paint Taylor in the most positive light as possible. Like she makes no mistakes, has no faults, and has never done a bad thing in her lifetime. It is only the people around her that trigger her to make her act bad. In which case, Taylor is believed to be blameless of her actions while the others around her deserve to be punished for her ability to act on her own free will.

Overall, I’m pretty upset and unnerved about the books I’ve read that are by K. L. Walther. Yet, as much as I can complain about her books, there is something that is important to remember: K. L. Walther has been including Taylor Swift references that only Swifties can understand since her book, The Summer of Broken Rules, was published. (I know there is another book published before it, but I haven’t read that book. So, I’m going to focus on The Summer of Broken Rules as the start point.) I knew she would include these references, but what has astounded me the most about her two most recent books, While We’re Young and We’re a Bad Idea, Right?, are the most sloppiest books when it comes to references. Yes, they are well woven into the books to the point where you cannot skip them unless you skip important plot points of set ups of important events in the plot, yet, they are still really sloppy compared to The Summer of Broken Rules. It is almost like most of the effort to create high quality, well written books were focused more on incorporating the references than it was to developing a good quality story.

So, what do I think I should do now? I think I should stop reading contemporary books for a while. Since the COVID-19 lockdown, references to Taylor Swift have been incorporated in books that I normally read have heavily increased. And that’s why I decided to read more books published before 2020 and even before 2016. It seems like a breath of fresh air to read books in which publishers don’t talk about celebrities because of fear of copyright problems or liability problems. The books are more original, well rounded, and contain characters and events that are more believable. Even the books I would criticize back then read better than the modern day ones.

Do I think Taylor Swift is responsible for this type of literature? I don’t know and don’t want to think about it. What I do know is that Taylor’s fanbase will buy anything that reminds them of Taylor Swift. Every reference is seen as a good sign. So, the more references, the better. (You can thank the Swifties I meet in real life for knowing about that) What is so sad is that Taylor’s notoriety was built on the fact that there was an originality to her. Today, I think we crave originality. We crave something well done by a human, not a computer. I also think companies burn through the originality of human made creation so fast that nobody has time to enjoy them. So, I think it is just publishing companies ignoring the quality of original books in order to use someone else’s fame to get more books to sell.

In my eyes, it is a short term solution for a long term problem, especially for authors that want their work to sell more copies of their books. Although I don’t know what type of requirements K. L. Walther has to create her novels, I’m really tired of them and her version of what happened in Taylor’s life. To me, it ruined the books and makes me not want to purchase or read another book by K. L. Walther again.

 

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading.