To DNF or Not to DNF?

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Titles marked with an asterisk (*) were gifted to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Today I want to discuss deciding whether or not to stop reading a book you don't enjoy - or DNF (did not finish) as it's known in the book community (which isn't grammatically correct, as to DNF is "to did not finish," but we use it anyway). It's something I never used to do, but something I've been doing more often.

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Some Things are Bigger Than Blogging

- On Taking an Hiatus & Giving Yourself a Break

I'm here with a different kind of post today. I've been wanting to write more personal posts, the "get to know the blogger behind the blog" kind, as I haven't really done many of them, and while this isn't exactly what the kind of thing I was hoping to write, it's something I feel is important to discuss.

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We Book Bloggers Need to Recognise Our Worth

Book Bloggers Need to Recognise Our Worth

Last month, YA author Courtney Summers sent out her third newsletter of the year, "She knows she's talented," about her path to realising she's good at what she does, acknowledging it, and, ultimately, that her success is down to her hard work. She was particularly talking about herself as an author, and other authors, but it got me thinking about about how I think of myself as a blogger.

"I waited years for someone or some milestone to signify I'd earned my career. This in spite of the countless hours of work I'd put into my craft, the talent I knew I had, the deadlines I'd met, the accolades my books received, and the audience I built. While I waited, I often apologized for or disclaimed the utter audacity of my having them. Do that enough, self-doubt creeps in. Doubt yourself, you'll act accordingly." From "She knows she's talented," by Courtney Summers.

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On Promoting Your Problematic Faves

Today, I really want to talk about problematic faves, because I've seen some things recently that have kind of wound me up.

It's to do with high profile/quite popular YA authors and their books, and how those who love their books seems to simply ignore their problematic behaviour/books. I've also seen a number of new releases with problematic content that have been raved about. It is very possible that maybe those readers are unaware of the problems with the authors and/or the books, especially in regards to new releases, but I don't think it's that's true in all cases when it comes to high profile authors.

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On Fate, Destiny and Prophecy in Books

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Titles marked with an asterisk (*) were gifted to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Today I want to discuss one of my favourite elements to some fantasy stories that, when relly dug into, really get me thinking: fate and prophecy.

I love thinking about books that discuss a character's fate or destiny, or prophecies about a character's future. I like to think about, as I read the story, whether what's fated to happen is actually going to happen anyway, or if it's because the character has heard about their fate, their destiny, or a prophecy involving them that leads it to be.

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How the Way I Read Affects What I Read

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I was going to talk to you today about the way I read - until I realised I've already posted about How My Imagination Takes Over When I Read. But what I didn't talk about is how the way I read affects what I read. Because while, yes, I love the stories, and the plot, and the characters of the books I read, what I love most is the reading experience.

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Time Saving Hacks for Book Bloggers

Book blogging is a lot of work. It takes a hell of a lot of time and effort to come up with engaging content and thoughtful reviews. But having been a book blogger for ten years now, there have been a few things I've learnt over the years that help cut out some of the time. It may only be a few minutes, but those minutes add up. So I thought I'd share with you a few hacks that may help you, too.

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On the Pressure to Buy Books

Today, I want to talk about something that has been bothering me for a while - the pressure within the YA community to buy books. As a member of the YA community, I've seen a number of things over the past few months with regards to YA readers buying books that have slowly been building up and building up, and I just feel it needs to be addressed.

The majority of books are expensive, there's no way of getting round that. It's fact. It's something I've discussed before. And while people of all ages can and do read YA, the target audience are teenagers, who don't have disposable income (see Vicky of Vicky Who Read's post The Many Ways YA Books & The Community Isolates Teens for more discourse on how those who buy YA have an affect on what gets published). And what I've been seeing is the pressure members of the YA community are under when it comes to buying books, based on a number of issues.

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What Do We Want From Reviews?

Recently, I have been reading reviews - on blogs, on Goodreads, on Amazon - for specific books and becoming quite frustrated. Which led me to ask on Twitter, "Does no-one else read reviews to find out more about a story?", to which I got more responses than I expected, and I realised that a lot of us actually want very different things from reviews.

A good number of years back, I discovered three Aussie blogs that I absolutely adored; Eleusinian Mysteries, Saz101, and Read Me Bookmark Me Love Me, all of which are sadly no longer running. Run by Brodie, Sarah, and Lisa, these blogs were everything. They're reviews were fun and full of passion, but they also wrote long, detailed reviews that answered every question I could ask. Loving their reviews, my review style changed. I didn't copy their review style, my reviews are very much me, but my reviews got longer, more detailed. The reviews I have from before discovering these blogs are pretty crap, but they're still here, if you wanted to look back far enough.

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How I Approach Blogging to Reduce Stress and Pressure

Inspired by Cerys at Browsing For Books' post Feeling Pressured to Read - Why the YA Community Can Be Toxic and Isla of Whisper of Ink's Do You Genuinely Love the Content You're Creating and Consuming?, today I want to talk about how I approach book blogging. I've had this conversation before on Twitter and in the comments of other people's blogs, but I've never written about it here. I've been book blogging for ten years now, and the main reason I'm still here is because I've found a way of blogging that works for me.

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USYA vs UKYA Writing Styles

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All titles mentioned in this post were gifted to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Today I want to talk about USYA and UKYA, and their writing styles. I'm sure anyone who reads a lot of USYA and UKYA that the writing styles are very different. They're so distinctive, you could give me two books by a US author and a UK author, without telling me where the authors are from, and the majority of the time, I'd be able to tell you which is which.

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Titles marked with an asterisk (*) were gifted to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Kinds of Books I Won't Read

When it comes to what we read, we all have different tastes. Different genres we like, different writing styles, and so on. And because of those different tastes, there will be certain books we won't read just because they're not our bag, and that's fine. But that's not exactly what I want to talk about today. It's less books I don't fancy, and more books I refuse to read, period. Sometimes the things I have issues with are made clear from the blurb, sometimes I only discover the books feature things I do not want to read by actually starting to read them, so I end up DNF-ing them. Here are some of the things that will stop me from reading a book.

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The Price of Hardbacks

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Titles marked with an asterisk (*) were gifted to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

There's something I wish to discuss today about hardbacks. The price. I have previously mentioned my issue with the price of hardbacks, but I want to dig a little deeper. I have various issues with hardbacks, which are mentioned in the post linked, but a lot of the time, when books are published in hardback first, you have to choose whether you want to wait for paperback or whether you want to buy it now.

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On Authors Reacting & Responding to Negative Reviews

I am mad. I am so, so angry. I am sick to death of the way some authors treat bloggers/reviewers. Sick to death. I am absolutely fuming. Because when will it end?

Back in January, the hurt and upset over how we're treated led to me writing Why Authors Should Respect and Appreciate Book Bloggers. Why? Because it was announced that author Kathleen Hale was having a book published about when she stalked a reviewer who gave her a negative review. Because E. K. Johnston showed her lack of respect for bloggers when she tweeted that when, at signings, bloggers ask her not to personalise ARCs, she writes, "This is an ARC. I hope you didn't buy it." Because author and book blogger behind LGBTQ Reads, Dahlia Adler tweeted about authors not promoting blog content they've requested/were involved in. But that hasn't been the last of it. Authors have been throwing their toys out of the pram because of negative reviews.

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Books I Want to Reread - Fantasy Edition

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Titles marked with an asterisk (*) were gifted to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Rereads. I absolutely love them. But being a book blogger, with an ever growing TBR, I don't reread as much as I would like. Most years, I manage to fit in a reread of one series, but I don't get to reread everything. Plus there's the guilt of not read the books I already have, and worrying about what to post on my blog, as most of the time, the books have already been reviewed.

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White Authors, Stop Writing Cultural Appropriation

Trigger Warning: Racism and cultural appropriation.

There is something that I need to address. Something I can't ignore. I've talked about it on Twitter, but I need to talk about it here, too. White authors need to stay the hell away from the stories of people of colour.

There has been another controversy in the YA world over the last few days, surrounding The Hand, the Eye and the Heart by Zoë Marriott. It's a retelling of Mulan, set in China, with a nonbinary main character. People have spoken up about this, about how this book is harmful and offensive. How a white author has taken a story belonging to people of colour for herself, again, when there are so few chances for people of colour to tell their own stories. There have been white tears and white fragility, and a fellow white author being outright racist. And it's absolutely disgusting.

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Books that Leave a Lasting Impression

Ad: Titles with an asterisk (*) were gifted to me by the publisher for the purpose of an honest review.

Today, I want to talk to you about the books that left a lasting impression on me. In her Predicting My 5 Star Reads of 2019, Kate of Reading Through Infinity wrote about how she is quite a critcal reader, and because of this, she only rated four out of the 82 books she read five stars. That got me reading about my own rating of books myself, because I rate a lot of books five stars. How and why I do that is a conversation for another time, but it made me think that there aren't that many that I can think of off the top of my head, just because there are so many.

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What Do We Want From Retellings? Part 2

Ad: Titles with an asterisk (*) were gifted to me by the publisher for the purpose of an honest review.

Today, I am back to continue with my What Do We Want From Retellings? discussion, after quite a long wait. If you haven't yet read it, do check out What Do We Want From Retellings? Part 2, where I discussed what I want from straight retellings and reimaginings. Today, I'll be talking about prequels and sequels, different POVs, and thematic retellings.

Prequels and Sequels

Prequel and sequel retellings are stories set before or after the original story. Prequels, obviously, generally show us an author's idea of what may have led to the events of the original story, and from what I've seen, more often than not, they tend to be from the perspective of the villians, giving us their origin story - I'll talk more about these when I discuss different POVs. And prequels show what might happen after the original story, continuing it on to see what could happen next. There has been quite a slew sequels published recently in the UK when it comes to children's classics, like Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders and Four Children and It by Jacqueline Wilson, sequels to Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, and Return to the Secret Garden by Holly Webb, a sequel to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, among others, but generally for younger readers.

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Don't Demand Authors Perform Their Outrage for You

There has been another recent YA controversy where a marginalised author wrote a book that was harmful to another marginalised group, and insensitive about a tragedy. But that's not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the people who demand authors from the marginalised group that has been harmed to speak out publicly about the controversy - like this.

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Authors are People, Too

There's something I want to discuss about author/reader in person interactions. On 18th February @flightofstarz tweeted asking people to share the best and worst authors they've met. Some people complained about authors who looked like they didn't want to be there, or who were miserable, and it needs to be addressed. A number of people on Twitter did address it, but I'd like to give my two pence, too.

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