Tagged: rant
How Not to Criticize a Book Reviewer
As a book reviewer, I obviously give out a lot of criticism so of course I’m equipped to take a lot of criticism. I keep an open mind and weigh pretty much everyone’s opinion carefully to see whether it has merit or not. I listen to the feedback my readers give me through polls and comments as well as read articles about how to improve my blog. Improving my blog is a constant work in progress, if I’m honest so I do like criticism. However, there are right and wrong ways to go about criticizing a book reviewer and/or their reviews.
Criticism #1: “[A rebuttal of my review saying that my 1 star rating was not deserved.] This was written by an entire class of very exasperated middle schoolers who just finished reading the novel.”
There are a lot of problems with criticizing something this way, but the main logical fallacy is this: [x] group of people liked [y] therefore you should. This is utterly ridiculous and I would have expected better from the teacher (yes, a teacher said this!) who criticized my review of The Outsiders. That’s like saying lots of middle schoolers a couple of years ago loved Justin Bieber therefore I should like Justin Bieber. Anyone with a brain can dispute that logic, believe me.
Quite frankly, I don’t give a crap if an entire class of middle schoolers liked The Outsiders. This is arrogant of me but I think I have slightly more reading experience than they do, considering I have averaged 200 books per year for well over a decade. Is my opinion more valid than theirs? No, but it’s certainly more informed. In the end, what’s wrong with criticizing a review like this is the idea that one group likes something and therefore everyone should like it. It’s ridiculous. Continue reading
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
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
Is YA Fiction too Dark?
(Picture courtesy of Bottom of the Glass.)
This rant article was prompted by Emma Waverman over at Embrace the Chaos writing an article about how she finds YA fiction too dark. This would be okay as it is her own opinion, but what irks me is that she has condemned the YA genre without having read much of said genre. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:
Ms. Waverman has absolutely every right as a parent to be concerned about what her twelve-year-old son is reading. She has said that she thinks the YA genre is generally dark (particularly since it has books like The Hunger Games) without having read any YA books, aside from a little bit of Harry Potter—at least that she mentions. My problem is that she seems to dismiss the whole genre out of hand without even truly sampling it. She proclaims she is an avid reader and a ‘book snob’, but why has she not read these books along with her son if she is so concerned? Despite what people think, YA fiction is not all that different from adult fiction, which brings me to my next point. Continue reading