Tagged: masq2
What I Hate About YA
Obviously I love the Young Adult genre. I wouldn’t be reading it and focusing my blog around it if I didn’t. But YA as a genre has its flaws and there are some things that consistently appear in books that drive me mad. What are some of these things? Read on!
1. The girl always gets the guy (or vice versa).
I won’t claim I’m an expert in matters of the heart, but I do know one thing: You don’t always get the person you want. Seriously, why is love in YA books always requited? It doesn’t happen like that in real life. In real life, when you have a crush on someone, there’s a good chance they don’t feel the same way. And it sucks. Yes, fiction is supposed to be uplifting to a certain extent, but can’t it be a little more realistic? Continue reading
How to Alienate Book Reviewers
Hello!
I was wondering if you would like to review my book, Random Name. The blurb is below.
[Big long blurb I’m too lazy to read.]
Have a nice day,
Random Author Person
I get these all of the time. They’re form emails and they can turn a great day into a bad one because my blood starts to boil after reading only a few lines. And it’s about time I’ve tackled them on my blog because they are rampant in the book blogging community. Here are my thoughts on them:
Names are easy to find, believe me.
Argument: “Names are hard to find!”
Us bloggers (or maybe it’s just me) are kind of vain. Even if we don’t have our full names on our blogs, we usually have either our first names or pseudonyms on an ‘About’ page. This is usually located in an easy-to-find tab next to the Home tab. By not even bothering to use a blogger’s name in the greeting, authors are sending the message that we’re not worth their time.
Do you see the hypocrisy here? Authors are expecting book bloggers to take hours out of their days to read their books but can’t even be bothered to spend a minute maximum finding the blogger’s name. That’s not lazy, that’s rude. Continue reading
What Makes a Good Dystopia?
I know, I know. ‘Good dystopia’ is an oxymoron, but I think you know what I mean. Dystopias, ever since the release of The Hunger Games, have exploded in popularity both in the teen and adult markets. There are a lot of good ones out there, but there are a lot of bad ones too. But what makes a dystopia good (read: interesting) for the reader?
1. It has to be believable.
Many of you know my gripe about how the faction system in the Divergent trilogy would never, ever work because people are not like that. If dystopian fiction doesn’t have a dystopia that makes sense or could really happen someday, readers are not going to like it. Authors have to know enough about human nature and world politics in order to create dystopias that could really happen. Sadly, a lot of authors just seem to skip this general knowledge requirement and jump in head first.
Why was Orwell’s 1984 so popular? Because it really could happen. It drew elements from the society of the day and predicted some things that are going on to this day. Compare that to Divergent, where there are 5 factions that you pretty much have to join and fit completely into one category unless you’re Divergent. Most people in Veronica Roth’s world are not Divergent, which tells you how much she really knows about human nature. Continue reading
A Legend Should Never Be Dimmed
This post was brought on by two things, as usual: my father and a book. Since who says I can’t be logical sometimes, I’ll start with the former.
Now, my father is a big opera fan; he’s always appreciated opera, a trait he inherited from his mother. Moreover, he’s a huge Luciano Pavarotti fan and almost shows emotion when he speaks of his death. He’s not someone who you would call starstruck, but he greatly admired the legend that was Luciano Pavarotti. Understandably, he was quite outraged when it came out that Pavarotti’s last performance at the Torino Olympic ceremony in 2006 was lip-synched. At the time, he said something that still haunts me:
“That should never have come out. A legend should never be dimmed.” Continue reading
Nothing is Free
Rant Mode: On.
Today I got a very generic email from a blogger that wanted me to promote their blog here on The Mad Reviewer. Here is a copy of the email:
Hey I was just wondering if you’d have a look at my blog (www.anotherpretentiousteenagethemedblog.com) and if you enjoy it would you mind promoting it on your blog?
I loved your list!
Cheers
🙂
Okay, so the domain name isn’t real but I’m certainly not giving the person in question the publicity they were asking for. I sent them a reply, not-so-politely informing them that I do not work for free. Thus, my rant today: nothing is free.
But wait, Carrie, you say. Don’t you run this blog for free? Don’t you guest post for free? Don’t you review books for free?
Eh, not really. Continue reading