Tagged: discussion

Discussion: One Star Reviews

Although I honestly had no idea this whole controversy existed until a year or so ago, apparently posting one star reviews is a little controversial in the book blogging community.  Some bloggers believe that posting one star reviews is part of an honest and open reviewing process.  Others believe one star reviews are a waste of their time or invite unwanted negativity and possibly author attacks.  It really varies blogger-to-blogger.

As my regular readers know, I do post one star reviews.  Sometimes I’ve posted 0.5 star reviews.  Why do I read books I clearly don’t like?  Well, like any sane human being I pick up a book because it’s interesting and I think I’ll like it.  Sometimes the promise of the blurb and the other reviews encourage me to do so only to disappoint me.  When I start a book I don’t like to not finish it.  This is in part because of my natural stubbornness but also my determination to give books a fair review.  If I hate the character in the beginning, maybe they’ll get better.  If the editing is bad in the beginning, maybe it gets better as the novel goes on.  But if I’m honest, it’s mostly stubbornness so I can say that I gave the book an honest try and really didn’t like it.

While it does invite author ire (mostly) in the case of self-published authors, I will continue posting one and 0.5 star reviews if I think it’s a fair rating.  For me it’s part of my honesty-is-best policy.  However, I differ from the book bloggers that give the rest of us a bad name in that I never author-bash or really go crazy on the book bashing.  Still, some people feel that for themselves it is wrong to post one star reviews for a number of reasons.  And that’s absolutely fine by me; it’s their blog after all and it’s totally up to them.

What I want to know now is this: If you’re a blogger, do you post reviews of books you didn’t like?  Do you think it tends to invite author attacks in some cases and thus avoid it or do you have other reasons for not posting negative reviews?  If you’re an author who does reviews, do you post one star reviews or do you just give constructive criticism to your fellow authors in private (if you were requested to read the book)?

Lazy Sundays: Game of Thrones Season 5 Trailer!

 

When I saw that the Game of Thrones season 5 trailer had been leaked to the internet in the form of a videotaped Imax preview, I was so excited.  Then I got really excited when I saw that the producers had gone ahead and just released the official trailer since it was leaked anyway.  (Knowing them, they knew full well it was going to be leaked and totally planned the whole thing.)  Of course, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I watched the trailer a couple of times and now am so excited for April 12.  *mild spoilers ahead*

In the trailer we see the Sand Snakes, some of my favourite Dornish characters and they look absolutely amazing.  We also see Tyrion and Varys, Cersei being her usual scowling self, Littlefinger with his hands all over Sansa, Daenerys being queenly, etc.  Nothing really all that surprising since I’ve read the books but I’m excited nevertheless.  One of the really short clips was of a young blonde girl and a young brunette in fancy gowns walking in some dark woods.  Could this be young Cersei going to see the witch and receive the prophecy that haunts her throughout her life, particularly now?

Seriously, I can’t wait for Season 5.  It’s going to be good.

Any other Game of Thrones fans out there?  What do you think of the trailer?  Anything you see that particularly excites you/piques your interest?

Discussion: The Most Disappointing Book Sequel (For You)

Sometimes an author’s debut novel or their first novel in a new series is just awesome.  You fall in love with the characters, the world-building and the author’s writing style and you’re so eager for the sequel that you can hardly wait.  You try to make sure your expectations aren’t too unrealistic but you do expect that the second book will be the same high quality as the first…except it isn’t.  The writing is trite and full of purple prose, the characters do total 180s and seem to have completely lost their minds and the world-building is revealed to be shaky at best.  It’s the curse of Book 2 Syndrome!

This happened to me most recently with Captive by Aimée Carter.  Pawn had an unique premise, decent characters and a plot that just kept me guessing.  But the sequel Captive was absolutely awful.  Where the main character Kitty had been a smart if relatively naive main character who generally knew when to keep her mouth shut, in the second book she just would not shut up about anything.  She kept smart-mouthing everyone, revealing important secrets she could have kept for leverage later and just generally having a bad case of verbal diarrhea in order to move the plot along.  It was just awful and is one of the best examples of Book 2 Syndrome I’ve ever seen.

What I want to know now is this: Have you ever had a really bad book sequel experience?  Whose book was it and why was it so awful/disappointing?  Or, if you haven’t ever been disappointed by the second book in a series, what was the most disappointing sequel to a movie you’ve ever seen?

Let me know in the comments below!

Discussion: Books You Want to See Adapted

Every book fan has had their favourite book butchered in either movie or television form.  (Trust me, I used to be an Eragon fan.)  But sometimes you get a very faithful adaptation of the books that are in some ways even better than the source material.  See: Harry Potter (done well) and Game of Thrones (sometimes even better, sometimes worse but generally done well).  One of the things that really annoys me about movies these days is that they’re remaking movies that no one wants to see remade: movies that just came out a couple of years ago, classics, etc.

Then that got me thinking: what if the movie industry decided to adapt more worthy books instead of remaking old movies again and again?

One of the books I would love to see on the silver screen is Feed by Mira Grant.  Zombies are popular now and Shaun and Georgia are main characters that are fairly easy to relate to.  Mira Grant wrote the book in such a cinematic fashion that it would be very easy to adapt and make a two to two and a half hour movie out of the novel without really cutting all that much.  Plus, there’s a ton of humour, political intrigue and of course zombies (with extra added science!).  If the right director got his/her hands on it, I would probably be first in line to go see it as a movie.

What I want to know now is this: If a good director that stayed faithful to the source material was going to adapt any book, what book would you want to see as a movie or a TV show?  Why?

Discussion: Pet Peeves in Fiction

I have so many pet peeves about fiction because I read a lot.  Here are the ones I hate the most:

  • When authors write ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use’ every single time.  It doesn’t make you sound smarter, trust me.
  • Just bad grammar in general.  Not the deliberate kind I have on my blog (because it’s supposed to be informal) but just bad grammar out of ignorance in a published copy.
  • LOVE TRIANGLES.  Please, please, please, can we just agree to stop this travesty?  It’s so overdone that it makes me want to throw my Kindle at the wall whenever I see it.  There are more important things in life than “Which boy do I like best?”.

And this one isn’t the author’s fault (usually), but:

  • Bad formatting.  Even on NetGalley, which gives out ARCs, I expect to be able to read your book.  Some publishers just think they can download the text straight from a Word document (or whatever they use) to the .mobi format without any changes.  That results in things like totally unreadable text obscured by pictures, every single sentence being on a totally different line, random numbers and crap in the text and sometimes even parts of the text are totally unreadable because they’re supposed to be a different colour in the physical copy but light colours don’t translate well to the .mobi file.  I actually had to send a publisher a pretty annoyed note about the last one.  Please: format your book, even if it’s just an ARC.

Okay, rant over.  Now it’s your turn: what are some of your biggest pet peeves in fiction?  Is there a trope you just hate with the passion of a thousand fiery suns?  Or do you just hate when people don’t take the time to proofread properly?  Let me know in the comments below!