Happy Birthday to The Mad Reviewer!

1st-birthdayYes, tomorrow is The Mad Reviewer’s one year anniversary!  One year ago, at around 5:00pm CT I signed up for WordPress and started blogging with a pathetically short welcome post.  On my first day I had 18 hits and one comment from a friend I knew in real life.  Now on my blog’s anniversary I’m averaging a little less than 200 hits a day and about 10 comments a week.  Yes, I’m not the biggest fish out there in the sea, but I certainly have more reach than I used to.

As a treat tomorrow, I’m going to tell you where the heck I got the idea to start a blog.  Why I decided on my name, my niche and my blogging style, etc.  I’m also hoping to run a couple giveaways this month as a thanks to my followers, so stay tuned for another year of madness!

Why do you Read?

Why do you read?  That’s a question I get a lot, mostly because I have my nose in a book over 50% of the time.  But really, why do I read?  Here are just some of the reasons.

Reading is Fun

1.  Enjoyment.

Books are great entertainment and they’re certainly better than what’s on TV 99% of the time.  Hmm…’reality’ TV or a good book that makes me laugh, cry and genuinely care about the characters?  I think that’s a pretty easy decision most of the time.  Of course not all books are great books and some have certainly been much worse than reality TV, but there’s certainly less chance of being lied to constantly when you’re reading.  At least most editors try to get their writers to stick to the facts, whereas most television shows seem to not care as long as they’re getting views.

Good books make you laugh at the characters’ antics, cry at their losses and your heart race when they are in danger.  Movies have the advantage of visuals and audio, but books allow readers to (generally) see inside the characters’ heads and have more in-depth knowledge of what’s going on.  I personally find it easier to connect with characters in books than in movies or television because of that, but that might just be me. Continue reading →

Posting for 20four12

I swear guys, I really am guest posting today!

Anyway, today I guest posted over at 20four12, reviewing a book that had I bothered to look at the author’s name, I never would have picked up.  However, I’m glad I was lazy because I found a very good book from an author that has improved vastly since his first book.  So if I’ve piqued your curiosity, feel free to go read my review of Beyonders: A World Without Heroes by Brandon Mull.  I promise there are no gigantic cow milking scenes in this one.

Look What Just Arrived! (#7)

Carrie Pictures 2012 280Yes, I’m posting today.  For real this time!  And yes, I went to the bookstore.  Again.  So what did I get there?

  • Hade’s Daughter by Sara Douglass
  • Kushiel’s Mercy by Jacqueline Carey
  • Kushiel’s Justice by Jacqueline Carey
  • Legends anthology
  • The Josephine B. Trilogy by Sandra Gulland
  • The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George

Most of these, except for the Jacqueline Carey books, were completely random reads.  I was in the Used section after finding nothing too interesting in the small YA section (way too much vampire stuff) and stumbled across most of these.  Hade’s Daughter is completely random and frankly I know nothing about it, but I picked it up because it was about ancient Greece.  The Legends anthology (volume 1) is also another impulse buy but I’m looking forward to this one because it has entries by Stephen King, Orson Scott Card and a couple other big names.

The Josephine B. trilogy sounds oddly familiar, but I know I haven’t read it before.  Most likely I had been drooling over it on Amazon in the past, but never bothered ordering it.  The Memoirs of Cleopatra is one I’ve had my eye on for a while, but for $30 it was never happening.  This is one case where I love buying used because although it is over 900 pages, the price should not be that high for a paperback book.  But hey, what do I know about the factors involved in pricing a book?  (Not much, to be honest.)  What I do know is that I bought all of these used books for less than the cover price of The Memoirs of Cleopatra new.