Category: Uncategorized
Discussion: Strong Female Characters
Yes, I usually reserve discussion posts for weekends, but why not start the weekend a little early this week?
Anyway, what I want to talk about this week is strong female characters, particularly in YA. Sometimes you encounter a genuinely strong female character that can fall in love and yet not depend on her man to solve all of her problems. Other times, not so much. You end up getting a Faux Action Girl who is always described as tough by the author and other characters but never actually does anything. Well, except get rescued by the male lead.
My latest favourite strong female character is QuiTai from The Devil of Ponong series by Jill Braden. She isn’t physically strong, but she uses her wits to help her conquered people and stay one step ahead of the Thampurians. I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s just say that when it comes down to a choice between a man and the livelihoods of her people you aren’t in much doubt as to what she’s going to choose. QuiTai was awesome in the first book, The Devil’s Concubine and even better in the second book, The Devil Incarnate. She’s definitely taken a well-deserved place among my favourite heroines.
So my question for you guys this week is: What makes a strong female character? Who are your favourite heroines? Why?
As always, discussion posts are posts where you’re absolutely free to engage with myself and/or other commenters. My Commenting Policy still applies, but that just encompasses what I like to call “basic human decency”.
The Day an Author Suggested I Kill Myself
I’ve been book reviewing for one year and seven months now. Comparatively I haven’t been around for very long in the blogging world, but I have been around long enough. What’s ‘long enough’? Well, I’ve been blogging long enough to have trolls try to start flame wars and authors attack me for having an opinion and expressing said opinion. I’ve learned to deal with it because, hey, most authors and commenters are awesome people. I was also blessed with a thick skin as well as an iron-clad commenting policy that I’ve always followed.
Compared to the experiences of some book bloggers I’ve had it pretty good. Some book reviewers have faced far worse than I have, others have faced far less. For the most part I’ve put up with it and have not called out authors publicly because I didn’t think their behaviour constituted public humiliation.
Until now.
The Ugly Side of Book Blogging: A Particularly Bad Example
What a coincidence it was that today I posted a discussion post about the ugly side of book blogging! You see, today I got a generic email from an author named Robin Wyatt Dunn. As per my usual policy, I sent links to my review policy (where it states that I am closed to reviews) and to “How to Alienate Book Reviewers“, in which I rant eloquently about generic emails.
Now, usually I don’t care how such authors reply to this. Usually they don’t reply at all. However, Robin Wyatt Dunn replied like this:
“Here for my answer to your answer: http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/whats-a-cheap-quick-and-painless-way-to-kill-yourself.189242754/”
Yes, I’ve saved the email from said author for future reference. Screenshots can be provided.
And yes, I was just told by an author to kill myself. Isn’t book blogging just wonderful?
[As a side note to anyone who might think about retaliating: Don’t. The best thing you can do is ignore this type of behaviour and the person behind it. The only reason I’m going public with this is to draw attention to this type of sick, immature behaviour.]
Discussion: The Ugly Side of Book Blogging
A lot of my readers here are book bloggers as well and as we know, book blogging isn’t all roses and sunshine. There are disputes with authors, jealousy within the community, pressure to write good reviews for publishers, etc. But overall, in my personal experience, I’d say that authors are the best and worst part of book blogging.
I have met some absolutely incredible people through my book blog that I never would have otherwise. You guys know who you are. At the same time, I have been subjected to nasty comments, author meltdowns (only in private emails so far) and generic emails by authors who think they’re entitled to a review without remembering basic courtesy. So yes, authors are the reason why I’m doing this and the reason why sometimes I feel like saying “screw it!” and not accepting review requests at all. (It’s very tempting at the moment, believe me.)
My question for my fellow bloggers is this: what’s the worst part of book blogging? What about the best part? Did you ever have an incident so nasty you almost considered giving up book blogging?
The Best and Worst of July 2013
Well, July was actually a pretty good month for me. I got some serious reviewing in, writing 7 reviews in one day and 5 in another (and spacing the rest out like I normally do). I also did some serious reading and have begun requesting more from NetGalley which I really shouldn’t considering my author backlog. Ah, the wonders of procrastination!
Overall monthly views are down from last July (3,937 compared to 4,350 last July), but that doesn’t really concern me at this point. It may be that WordPress changed the way they’re counting statistics or it could be that people weren’t visiting my site as much. It’s not a big deal considering that I began the month with 413 followers and ended with 462! Followers are more important than views to me, so getting almost 50 views in one month is quite an accomplishment. It seems that the more followers I already have, the more I attract.
But enough rambling. Let’s take a look at the 5 best articles of July 2013:
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. How to Write a Review Request
4. My Least Favourite Book Tropes
5. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
For once, there are four newcomers to the top 5 list, three of which were published just in July. My Game of Thrones article is frankly, no surprise. I published it at the beginning of the month and am still averaging 15 views per day on it. It’s particularly SEO friendly and clicky so it’s spread around through social media more than my rants usually do. Similarily, How to Write a Review Request and My Least Favourite Book Tropes were articles/rants that were easily shared and promoted discussion. And of course, The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome continues its streak at the top. As for The White Queen, well, The White Princess just released and there’s quite a bit of buzz surrounding the series at the moment.
So what articles were the worst 5 this month?
2. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
3. There Comes a Prophet by David Litwack
4. Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey
5. Look What Just Arrived! (#3)
Again, no real surprises here. They’re all either self published books, old books or old articles. It’s a shame that so many good books end up on my bottom 5 list in terms of hits, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re still good books. It would just be nice for the authors to have a little more publicity, especially in the case of indies.
So that was how my July went: a blur of books and work (ah, tourist season). How was yours? Are you reading anything interesting?