Tagged: discussion

Discussion: Your Favourite Genre

I know it’s a little early in the week for a discussion post, but I just feel like mixing things up a bit.  So that’s why there’s a discussion for today and a review for tomorrow.

As you guys have noticed I read a wide variety of genres.  However, if I had to pick my absolute favourite genre it would be historical fiction.  When the right author tackles the right time period the results can be amazing.  Take, for example, Colleen McCullough’s First Man in Rome series.  It consists of massive 1000 page books but those huge page counts are needed to tell her story on that grand, epic scale I’ve come to adore.  The same can be said for Pauline Gedge’s historical novels set in ancient Egypt.  Truly, those are part of what started my obsession with ancient Egypt and they certainly kept my mind away from -40 weather on that cold, miserable Christmas.

That’s the thing about historical fiction: it’s very diverse.  There are so many time periods authors can cover and so many people within those time periods.  You can have completely made up characters, well known historical figures, obscure historical figures and/or fantastical elements.  There is just so much potential.

So what I want to know now is this: What’s your favourite genre?  Why?  Do you have more than one?

Discussion: Blogging Pet Peeves

Everyone reading this now is probably a regular blog reader and not just of The Mad Reviewer.  Most people that read one blog read at least a couple of blogs on a semi-regular basis, especially when those people are bloggers themselves.  But like books, there are some blogging deal breakers and pet peeves.  Here are just a few of my pet peeves:

1.  A busy layout.  A nice, unique design is perfectly okay but when you’ve got yellow spirals on a pink and purple polka dot background my brain starts to hurt.

2.  Not responding to comments at all.  I know I’m not always the speediest when it comes to replying to your comments, but I really do try and eventually 99% of comments do get a well thought out reply.  But on blogs where the blogger never responds to comments?  It just seems like they’re not that interested in what their readers have to say.

3.  Bad grammar.  Everyone makes typos; that’s pretty much expected when you’re editing yourself.  Yet when I encounter a blogger that doesnt like using capitol letters and doesnt spellchek it really starts to get irrtating.  Ya know?  Its worse when they do things like make run on sentences like this and never seem to know the difference between a colon semi-colon period exclamation point and especially a comma.

4.  Bloggers that don’t have a consistent posting schedule.  I totally get that life can get in the way of blogging sometimes.  That’s okay.  Yet when bloggers post every other day and then suddenly don’t post for a week, that gets annoying.  I like bloggers with a consistent schedule with very few exceptions.

Really, this could be an entire article but I should stop now.  After all, it’s your turn: What are your blogging pet peeves?  Why?

Discussion: The Changes to Goodreads

For those of you that don’t know, Goodreads announced a change to their terms of service the other weekend.  Essentially, they will no longer permit readers to create shelves or reviews about author behaviour.  For more information, you can see the entire thread here.

Now, in theory this is a great change because I am fully aware there are reviewers out there that make mountains out of molehills and accuse authors of bad behaviour when they’re actually the innocent party.  I get where Goodreads is seemingly coming from.  Yet I feel this policy actually hurts reviewers and allows bad authors to thrive.

You see, if a review just completely trashes the author, go ahead and delete it!  I’d be first in line to say that Goodreads needs far better moderation.  Yet if the reviewer points out in their review in a non-threatening manner something the author has done (i.e. told a reviewer to kill themselves) I don’t see anything wrong with that.  It allows the potential reader to see if they really want to give this money to this author and it can warn any potential reviewers that maybe this author isn’t the best to work with.

The thing is: how do you decide what constitutes a trashy review vs. a snarky one?  Who decides this?  And if Goodreads is doing this to protect authors from us nasty reviewers, how about banning authors like the one that told me to kill myself?  If authors are supposed to be protected, shouldn’t Goodreads work just as hard to protect reviewers?  The thing is, the abuse goes both ways.

I could do a whole article about this and likely will in the future but now I want to hear you guys weigh in: What do you think of the changes to Goodreads?  Do you think they’re for the better or worse?  Could Goodreads have done something differently in order to protect both authors and reviewers?  Please, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Discussion: Favourite Book Covers

Feed by Mira Grant

I don’t feel like tackling any huge issues today, so why not finally have a light-hearted, fun discussion post?  Favourite book covers definitely fits the bill.

Yes, the cover for Feed by Mira Grant is one of my absolute favourites.  Why?  Because it’s simple and still effective.  I mean, you have the blood representing the zombie aspect of the book and the RSS (or feed) sign representing the blogging aspect.  And with a teaser like the one below the title, how you can resist reading Feed?

Now what I want to know is this: What’s your favourite cover?  (Obviously you can link to an image of it in the comments.)  Why is it your favourite?

 

Discussion: Romance in YA Novels

No, this is not a discussion about whether romance is appropriate for YA novels, but rather a discussion of the romance we already find in YA novels.

I, for one, find most YA romances unbelievable and/or just plain creepy.  Yes, I know young love is crazy and even a little clingy, but some books take this to a whole new level.  In some novels, we see the male love interests take on qualities I would consider to be borderline abusive or worse: controlling what the main character does, who she talks to, giving her mixed signals constantly, etc.  The most notable example is, of course, Twilight.  However, I’m still seeing some of these behaviours in mostly male love interests in young adult novels.  It’s certainly not sending out any great messages to impressionable teens about what is love and what is not.

The other thing I have a problem with in YA romances is that they’re so unbelievable.  I know teenagers are particularly hormonal and romantic, but declarations of love after a week or so are just plain ridiculous.  In some books, the main character hardly knows her male love interest before she’s saying she loves him.  And when she realizes she loves him, suddenly she can’t live without him and has no interests outside her relationship with him.  Is that realistic?  Not really.  Is that healthy?  Definitely not.

Okay, I better stop now or I’ll be ranting all day.  Yes, there are some great, healthy relationships in YA (Katniss and Po from Graceling), but the trend of borderline abusive relationships is frankly disturbing to me.  But now I want to hear your thoughts on the topic: What do you think of romance in YA novels in general?  Are the portrayals of relationships healthy?  What is your favourite YA couple?  Why?