Tagged: discussion
Discussion: Your Experience with ARCs
(I won’t be here most of the day but I will reply to discussion comments later this evening.)
ARCs are simply advanced reading copies of novels from publishers or authors. They’re actually pretty simple when you think about it but they seem to cause a lot of controversy and drama in the book blogging world. One blogger gets a coveted ARC, another doesn’t, you know how it goes. But I don’t want to talk about drama today. I’m going to be facing middle school girl drama most of the day already (I’m refereeing a volleyball tournament).
What I want to talk about is your personal experience with ARCs as a blogger. Do you ever get physical ARCs in the mail? Or are you all digital now? Which is your preference? And of the ARCs you’ve received, which is/are your favourite(s)?
My personal favourite is one I just got, The Tiger Queens by Stephanie Thornton. I had reviewed and loved her Daughter of the Gods so when the tour for her latest book came out I immediately jumped on it. To my surprise, I got a personalized, signed ARC in the mail with the coolest note in a little scroll. Stuff like that really shows an author cares about their readers, you know? And I really do appreciate that.
If you’re an author, what has your experience been with sending out ARCs? Did they get a good reception? Was it worth it from a publicity point of view? And, finally, would you do it again?
Discussion: Your School Reading Experiences
Since I’m a huge book nerd, I’m assuming that most people reading my blog are book nerds of varying degrees. So I thought we could all share how our love of reading developed and was either discouraged or encouraged during school. Here’s my story:
In grade one and two there was quite an excellent reading program at my school consisting of 26 levels you had to finish at the end of the second grade. Well, the problem was that I mastered the books in each level too quickly but the teachers would not move me up the levels until I read every single book in them (although I was reading aloud fluently and had excellent reading comprehension). Despite their efforts to hold me back, I was finished a month before school ended and my mother’s bitter fight with the school to get them to give me level-appropriate reading material began.
Middle school was an extremely boring joke. By the time we were doing novel studies in grades 7, 8 and 9 I had already read all of the ones in the curriculum back in grade five and six. My English teacher at this time was awesome and by grade nine she got tired of me spoiling the entire plots (I’ll admit I was a bit of a smartass and being bored/frustrated didn’t help). So when I said yet again that I had already read the book we were about to study, she handed me an independent novel study booklet and let me use a book of my choosing. I think I chose I, Claudius by Robert Graves and loved it. Much better than the other option, which was reading a book I had read way back in the third grade (and could still summarize six years later).
So you could say school didn’t exactly encourage my love of reading, but thank goodness my parents did. We didn’t always have money for things like new movies or toys but there was always money for books and for that I’ll always be grateful. Without their support, I wouldn’t be writing this blog and my life would be a whole lot more boring and empty without it.
Well, now that you’ve heard my life story, I want to hear yours! How did your school experiences affect your reading now? Were they good or bad experiences?
Discussion: Unadaptable Books
As Hollywood seems to run out of ideas what with all of the reboots and such, they’re turning more and more to books for new material. Some books are easy to imagine as movies, you know. The Return Man by V. M. Zito, for example. Zito’s writing is already quite cinematic and zombies have done pretty well on the big screen in recent years.
However, some books are just not meant to be movies or TV shows whether because the technology to do them justice is not there yet or because it’s too complicated for that medium. One book that comes to mind that would be utterly unadaptable is The Color of Rain by Cori McCarthy. It’s a book that explores some pretty heavy things like sex slavery so you just know that the prudish North American ratings boards would give it an R rating and pretty much doom it at the box office. It also relies heavily on the main character’s inner monologue because without that monologue, she would be an utterly horrible character with almost no redeeming qualities in some spots. Basically, it would just not do well either as a television show or especially a movie.
What books do you think are unadaptable? Are there some that you could easily see turned into movies? Why or why not?
Discussion: The Next Supernatural Creature Fad
I think we all remember the boring horror that was the vampire craze spawned by Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga. (I still can’t get over the fact that her vampires sparkled.) For several months you could not find a YA book that didn’t feature vampires in some way or another as every author and their dog tried to cash in on the vampire craze.
Thank goodness it’s died down to a somewhat reasonable level of late. There have been quite a few trends since then, what with zombies, werewolves and shapeshifters. I’m not saying trends are bad but they’re a little boring when that’s all you see on the shelves at your local bookstore.
As for the next trend, I honestly don’t have a prediction. I think shapeshifters are relatively popular right now but there’s not as big of a market for the supernatural as there was even a year ago. Right now it’s still all dystopia, all the time in the YA market.
Anyway, what do you guys think will be the next supernatural fad in YA? Shapeshifting werewolves, sparkling zombies or something equally ridiculous? I can hold out hope that authors will try to move away from European myths and draw creatures from African and Asian cultures, but that’s really quite a pipe dream.
Discussion: Vampires
(I haven’t replied yet to last week’s discussion but I assure you I’ll be replying to all those wonderful comments later tonight after work.)
Vampires were huge a few years ago with the popularity of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. Personally I scoff at sparkly vampires but that’s probably because I do love myself a good vampire. Cold, calculating killing machines are my favourite but I love Anne Rice’s novels as well as some of the newer vampire works like Cameron’s Law. So basically I do appreciate good vampires in fiction but I’m not a fanatic that says all vampires have to be like [x]. I know at a very basic level the origins of vampires in literature but I’m no expert on it.
So what do you think of vampires in general? They were very overdone a few years ago with the Twilight craze but what do you think of their representation in fiction now? Are they still overdone, especially in YA? Do you like vampires in fiction or are you more inclined toward some other supernatural creature? If so, do you have a favourite version of vampire?