The Best and Worst of September

Well folks, it’s October already.  September went fast, especially since many of my previous stat records have been smashed.  My old record for views in one day was 305, but now it’s 861.  Why?  Anne Rice herself linked to my review of Pandora on her Facebook page and her Twitter account.  I suspect it will be a while before I break that record, so let’s look at what articles gathered the most hits in September:

1.  Matilda by Roald Dahl

2.  Pandora by Anne Rice

3.  The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

4.  The Giver by Lois Lowry

5.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

Pandora‘s rise to #2 isn’t all that surprising because of the extra publicity it gathered.  What is surprising is that Matilda is now the top article.  Most of my traffic for the day comes from Matilda, which makes me suspect people are either revisiting their childhood or teachers are doing novel studies way earlier than they did when I was little.  Of course the bottom three are related to your typical novel studies  both in Canada and the U.S.

So we know what the top articles were, but which articles did the worst in September?

1.  Rape Girl by Alina Klein

2.  My Favourite Heroines

3.  Fly Away Home by Maggie Myklebust

4.  The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

5.  What’s New in the World of Books?

The bottom books aren’t really that surprising, but what’s interesting to me is how they keep changing from month to month.  It seems like no article/review is consistently bad, which is nice.  The book reviews on the bottom 5 aren’t surprising because they are either obscure or were once popular, but the hype died down.  The articles aren’t surprising either because ‘My Favourite Heroines’ isn’t exactly the best article I’ve written and ‘What’s New in the World of Books?’ was a current events article.

In September, I also broke my record for views in one month, which was 4, 846.  It is now 6, 927.  The publicity from Anne Rice sure helped with that, but I’ve noticed that now I’m getting more views on the average day than I used to, which is how things should be as I get more content up.

So how was September for you guys?

Books into Movies: Eragon

If, for whatever strange reason, someone had been tracking my thoughts as I watched Eragon the movie, they would either by impressed or offended at my ability to swear in several languages.  I’m not a person that swears often, but when there’s nothing else to say I make an exception.  And believe me, Eragon the movie was an exception.

I have a lot of bones to pick with the movie adaptation, so I’ve divided it into different categories, each with its own score.

Lord help any warriors that went into battle in real life with armour like this.

Characters: 1/5.

I don’t think they could have possibly gotten the characters any more wrong.  It just doesn’t seem possible.  Murtagh, Angela, Brom and Arya…they were all so different from what they were like in the novel.  Okay, I get that they can’t put every little detail from the book into the movie, but they can try to get the character’s personality right.  Right?

Well, it seems like they didn’t even try.  Murtagh was cheerful and eager to go to the Varden, in stark contrast to the moody, tortured warrior Murtagh in the novel.  Garrett Hedlund was about as believable a warrior as my little sister would be.  Arya wore a dress and actually seemed to like Eragon in a romantic way.  In the novel, Arya was a strong warrior who never wore dresses except in her homeland; she wore men’s clothes because they were practical.  She was a practical and, at times, ruthless character.  And she certainly did not warm up to Eragon very much throughout the whole cycle, let alone the first novel.  I think one of the problems was that the filmmakers decided to put too much emphasis on the ‘sexy’ aspects and in doing so, did not stay true to the characters.  They didn’t even really achieve ‘sexy’ either.

The one character I did like was Saphira.  Rachel Weisz did such an excellent job with her voice and by extension, her personality.  Since we cannot directly see her thoughts as we did in the novel, the few lines Saphira did have were so important and Weisz nailed them, in my opinion. Continue reading →

Small Medium At Large by Joanne Levy

Image Courtesy of Goodreads

Synopsis: Lilah is your average Seventh Grader…until she is struck by lightning at her mother’s wedding. While Lilah is thankful to be alive, she’s in for a surprise; she can hear ghosts. Specifically Bubby Dora is always in Lilah’s ears, enlisting her help to find Martin (Lilah’s dad) a new girlfriend. 

How on earth is a Seventh Grader supposed to help her dad get back into the dating world, crush on Andrew Finkel and talk to dead people? Lilah is about to find out…

Continue reading →

Three Great Reasons to Read as a Teenager

I remember when I was a teenager how so many of my friends thought it was strange that I always had a book somewhere close at hand. All of them told me things like “I really never learned how to like reading,” or “Reading is so boring.” I’ll be honest, I never understood why they had such thoughts. To me reading has always been one of the best ways a person can spend their time. So, today I bring you three great reasons why every teenager should read regularly.

#1: Reading is the Perfect Escape

Being a teenager is hard sometimes. Everybody knows that, and sometimes you just need to get away from everyone else in your life and escape into another reality for a few hours. I did this regularly in my younger years and it always helped so much. Escaping into a fantasy world, some epic action, or a wistful romance story can be just the change of pace you need after some of the stress of being a teenager.

#2: Reading Will Improve Your Life

No doubt about it, reading and reading often will improve your life at some point. It’s a proven fact that people who read regularly can grasp new concepts more easily, can explain themselves more clearly, and can communicate with others more effectively. Reading often develops in you an innate skill that can’t really be explained, but it’s there, I promise. I’m positive that some of the opportunities I’ve had in life can be traced back to the fact that I love to read and have done better at certain activities because of it.

#3: Reading is the Easiest Fun You Will Ever Have

Now, more than ever, a young adult or teenager can find thousands of great stories to devour with their minds. Young adult fiction was not nearly as prevalent in my teenage days as it is now. Grabbing a book from the library is quick, easy, and best of all, free. Who can argue with fun that comes at no cost? I certainly can’t.

Books can take you places you’ve never been, put ideas in your mind that you’ve never dreamed of thinking before, and bring about changes in your life both large and small. So, take a moment, grab that book you got for your last birthday or during last Christmas you haven’t opened yet and give it a try. I bet you’ll find you like it more than you might think.

Vacation

To put things bluntly: I’m exhausted.  My personal life is hectic right now and my work life is just as bad.  That’s why I will be taking today (Friday) and the weekend off.  I need to catch up on reading the books authors have been sending me.  Some of them have been waiting for months.  I also need to catch up on my role as content editor for Mark of The Masquerade Crew’s anthology.

However, I will be coming back on Monday refreshed and with tons of new ideas for posts.  To kick off the start of a new ‘era’ on The Mad Reviewer, I will be publishing only articles for the week (but will be returning to my usual daily reviews the next).  These articles will be on a variety of topics.  Some will be comparing books to their movies.  Others will talk about the portrayals of historical figures in fiction.  And of course there will be one of my classic rants.  What else would you expect from The Mad Reviewer?

Thanks for your understanding and see you on Monday!