When Do You Stop Reading?

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. After a really busy semester, it’s been great to spend hours curled up with a good book. Unfortunately, I’ve found very few of those. In fact, I’ve been fairly disappointed with a lot of the books I’ve read recently. When I look at the book reviews I’ve posted, there’s a fairly even distribution between all the star rankings. However, all the five star books are ones I read last year. I’ve only read one four star book this year (Paranormalcy) and an awful lot of two or three stars.

Even though all the books I’ve read recently have been not so great, I’ve still finished all of them (with one exception). I forced myself to finish Shiver, and I’m currently trudging through The Uninvited which is supposedly a ‘gripping thriller’ but is actually quite boring. I could quite happily put the book down and never thing of it again.

So why don’t I? Honestly, I’m not quite sure. It could be it’s unfair to review a book I haven’t finished, or it’s cheating to count a half-finished book in my 100-books-this-year challenge. Those are part of it, but overall I think I just have this feeling that a book is a complete entity, meant to be read and enjoyed (or hated) in its entirety. Whenever I pick up a book, it’s like I make a commitment to read the whole thing ‘for better or for worse.’

Of course, this doesn’t apply all the time. Last week I read six chapters of Carrie Vaughn’s Discord’s Apple and then decided not to continue. My reasons for this were twofold: First off, the story was boring. There were perhaps four different plot lines and I didn’t see how they fit together. Even though the book was actually for adults, the whole idea seemed a little juvenile. Secondly, there was a lot of sexual content for no apparent reason. Sometimes a book needs to mention sex (like in Impossible). As long as it’s counted as bad and not really described, I’m okay with it, but in Discord’s Apple there were multiple sex scenes, all described, and they didn’t help the plot at all. They were just there because sex scenes are supposedly interesting.

 

Basically, I’ll struggle through any book that’s relatively clean, but once it goes too far in terms of sexual content or swearing I’ll put it down. A clean book that’s really poorly written may also get set down, but it’s much more likely that I’ll keep reading.

What about you? Do you ever stop reading books, or do you struggle through to the bitter end? What makes you stop reading?

Why Book Reviews are Useless (and how to make them less so)

This isn’t exactly a post on writing, but I thought it needed to be said, and I just finished my six-part series, so now’s the time for it.

I assume that all of you have a favourite book, or at least a book that you really, really like. I’m also guessing that you have some books you really dislike, ones you think aren’t worth reading and you can’t imagine how anyone could like it. For instance, I absolutely love The Hunger Games and I hated Shiver, and I really don’t get how anyone could dislike The Hunger Games or like Shiver. But lo and behold, if you go on Goodreads, they’ll be a lot of people who disagree with me.

On the whole, people do agree with me on those two books. The Goodreads rating for The Hunger Games is 4.54 (quite high for Goodreads) while Shiver is rated 3.96 (fairly average). When you average it out, The Hunger Games is ‘better.’ However, if you look at individual reviews, Shiver is going to have some five stars (I just check, and some of my friends gave it four or five), and The Hunger Games will have some one-stars (a couple of my friends gave it three). Some individuals will drastically disagree with me.

If that’s the case, why should you bother reading my reviews? Why read reviews at all? I can tell you a book if awful, but then you could go and read it and love it. I’ve read books that people have told me they loved, but I couldn’t stand them. Is there any reason to pay attention to goodreads/amazon ratings?

The thing that a good book review does is give you a sense of why the reviewer (dis)liked the book. My review of Shiver makes clear that I am not a werewolf fan, so that could well be why I didn’t like it. When I read reviews on Amazon for I Am Number Four, I saw that most of them talked about how terrible the characterization was. When I got the book, I had to agree, the characters were boring (though I have had some people say they loved them). If you’re more interested in a fast-paced action story than in riveting characters, then I Am Number Four would be great. If you like characters better, then you probably won’t enjoy it.

Basically, a good book review should do three things:

1-      Make clear that this is only one opinion (Don’t say ‘The only people who would like this book are ones who think Twilight is great literature’)

2-      Show how the reviewer’s personality affected the review (For instance, ‘I don’t normally like Paranormal/Romance, but I loved Paranormalcy’)

3-      Showcase both the books strengths and weaknesses (even the best book has some bad things, and even the worst has some strengths)

I’m not sure if my book reviews always fulfill those criteria, but I try to include them all. It may feel egoistic, but it’s essential to let your readers know what kind of reader you are, so that they know if their tastes are similar or not. You also need to temper that with a fair bit of humility, admitting that yours is only one opinion and even your favourite books have bad parts and even the ones you hate have good points. Basically, think about how your book reviews can be of the most help to your blog readers.

As for you, my loyal followers, is there anything I could be doing with my book reviews to help you out? Do you have any tips, either for me, or for other book bloggers out there? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave a comment! 

Book Review: Shiver

By Maggie Stiefvater

the cold.
Grace has spent years watching the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf—her wolf—watches back. He feels deeply familiar to her, but she doesn't know why.

the heat.
Sam has lived two lives. As a wolf, he keeps the silent company of the girl he loves. And then, for a short time each year, he is human, never daring to talk to Grace...until now.

the shiver.
For Grace and Sam, love has always been kept at a distance. But once it's spoken, it cannot be denied. Sam must fight to stay human—and Grace must fight to keep him—even if it means taking on the scars of the past, the fragility of the present, and the impossibility of the future.

Why I read it: I had seen the third book somewhere on someone’s blog… I think it was inkpop. Anyways, I thought it had something to do with Little Red Riding Hood. I wouldn’t have read it if I had known it was about werewolves. (BTW, I absolutely love the covers for this series. So plain, but they really stand out)

What I liked: There were a number of interesting ideas in this book, the number one being that werewolves only changed from people to wolves when the temperature got too low. I thought that was unique. It was also cool b/c at the beginning of each chapter it would have the temperature written at the top. And the font was blue! All in all, the packaging of this book was really neat.

What I disliked: Well, pretty much everything. Let’s make a list.

1-      The romance went WAY too fast. They start sleeping in the same bed the day they meet, and then they do have sex later on.

2-      Huge plot holes. The ending had a cliff-hanger that was just like ‘What????’ Also, there were two plot points (Two ‘bitten’ teens, and Shelby) who appear and then are barely mentioned again.

3-      I never understood Grace. As a little girl she was nearly killed by wolves, and yet she absolutely loves them, risking her life to save them from being shot. She also got really mad at her friends for keeping secrets from her, when the whole time she was keeping a werewolf in her house and not telling them.  

4-      Sam was just totally in love with Grace, and that’s about all I got from him. I never really understood his emotions towards anyone else. One second he would like Beck, the next he was super angry with him. It just never made sense.

5-      This book just didn’t seem to end. Getting close to the end I thought it was done, but then it just kept going and going, piling up minor events really quickly. The actual ending seemed really anticlimactic.

I could go on, but I don’t really have the time. Basically, I don’t know how anyone could like this book for its literary qualities. It could, however, appeal to fans of Twilight.

From a Christian Perspective: Certainly not recommended. There was a fair amount of swearing, especially in what would otherwise have been some of my favourite scenes. The author seems to think that for a scene to be emotional, the characters have to use God’s name in vain a couple dozen times. And then, of course, there’s the excessive romance between Grace and Sam. They start sharing a bed their very first night, they kiss a LOT, and they do have sex. Sam especially is described as ‘the best of them’ and a sort of self controlled, chaste person (werewolf), but when it comes to Grace, he looses all that.

To buy or not to buy: I certainly won’t be. I can only see this interesting Twilight fans, for people who'd rather have romance than action. I don’t know if I’ll even bother looking at the sequel, Linger. The only reason I would is because I want to read the first chapter and figure out if the ending of Shiver makes any sense at all.