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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36638
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I have read a great many books, and frankly I cannot remember ever being emotionally aroused, at all.

Now hear me out...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#/media/File:Plutchik-wheel.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#/media/File:Plutchik-wheel.svg) shows a catalogue of emotions, I guess one could call it a pretty complete set. I'd say the kind of emotions I'm looking at when reading a good book are things like joy, anticipation, interest; and conceivably boredom or disgust when the book is not to my taste.

The problem is: I am not experiencing joy because a character in a book does so. I am not experiencing surprise because a character is surprised by something. I experience joy and interest simply because I like the book and the act of reading. I experience anticipation because I want to know what's coming next; not because of what actually happens to the characters in the book.

Nothing about this is something that the author has specifically written into his book. Obviously _every_ author wants to have the positive emotions of his readers for _every single one_ of his books, so the book is sold more. But it's not like they finetune their sentences to create a specific emotion. They write an interesting and surprising book because... it's just what we do.

I can experience joy, interest, surprise, anticipation, boredom etc. when reading a paper about mathematics or physics or almost any other science - where the author has done his utmost best to _avoid_ emotional stuff. This tells me that the emotions I listed don't really count, for your question. If you fail to impart any positive emotion, you won't even get printed in the first place. The "relevant" emotions for your question would be the difficult ones... optimism, remorse, submission, love, ecstasy, awe, trust, rage. And also anger, which is the one you are asking about.

I simply cannot think of any way through which you could ever make me angry by reading a book, i.e. a medium that is not addressed specifically to me. At all. Not possible, sorry.

Original score: 0