Recommencement

Boy, has it been awhile! This may have been the longest hiatus I ever took from blogging, on account of my hectic peak end-of-year work season and, afterwards, over a month's worth of unforgettable vacations, the pictures and stories from which I can't wait to share with you.

I hope that you'll also bear with me as I transition back into blogging. It's not going to be the same as before--I'm not the same person I was before--and, inevitably, our interests change as we grow. I'll still blog about books, but there might be less frequent posts, fewer book reviews, and more posts about global/social issues that get me thinking. My travels in early 2013 have also awakened the travel bug in me, so with any luck, you'll get a fair number of posts about my travels, if I can make everything come together. I hope you'll still be interested enough to follow me on the next chapter of my life. I can't wait!

A sneak peak at travel-related posts that are coming up...

First I went here:

And then I went here:

I realize that the second picture is hard to puzzle out the geographical location of, so here's another clue:

Can I hear a "TELL ME MORE"?!?!

An Explanation For My Absence

You may have noted my absence from the blogosphere these past two months, and I'm afraid that I might have to continue to be absent for at least one more. My work involves US college applications, and since the Big Deadline is in early January, I'm now basically on the computer doing work 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Needless to say, at the end of the day, the last thing my eyes really want is more time spent looking at a screen. I hope to be back into the swing of blogging again in Spring 2013. Happy reading, everyone!

Planning

Why, hello there, readers whom I have sadly neglected in favor of pre-scheduled review posts! How are y'all doing?

I, uh, really don't have anything I planned to say in this post. So I'l just start making a list of things that I hope to address in future blog posts, at a time when my brain feels less scrambled and sleep-deprived.

Things That Steph Hopes To Blog About Sometime in the Future
(With Enough Nagging)

• Changing reading tastes
• Racism encoded in our society
• YA tropes that should be blistered out of books forever
• Plagiarism (oh yeah, touching upon that subject...again)
• Shanghai restaurants, and how to survive while eating food in China
• Recent trends in YA book covers
• Who you'd be if you were a character in a YA novel

Anything you're particularly interested in reading my thoughts on?

Privacy and Blogging

Around the Jing'an Temple on a winter's night.

In the last few weeks I have been reading a lot of non-book blogs. You might say that they'd be classified under "sex and relationships" and "culture/race." (If you're interested in checking out the blogs I have been poring through, they are here, here, and here.) Many of these blogs have several years' worth of backlog posts for me to blissfully spend hours reading through. I seem to enjoy reading blogs like I read books: one complete story at a time, not really getting into the ones that are serial or ongoing. It's interesting that this behavior of mine applies to TV shows as well. The only TV show I keep up with religiously is Castle; the rest, I tend to buy in box sets and watch over a series of weeks.

Reading these non-book blogs has made me think about what I want out of this blog. For the majority of its first three years (yes, my blog is three years old now. Kind of astonishing to think about, really), Steph Su Reads has been inarguably a book blog. I post book reviews, book-related news pieces, my reflections on book-related topics. It's been an incredible experience, but since graduating college and moving to Shanghai, I can't help but sometimes feel as if I want to do more with my blogging. If I grew tenfold as a person from entering college, I am growing even further in post-grad life. There are things I see, things I think about, things that I have changed that my fingertips sometimes tingle to write about.

And yet, at the same time that I feel like I have more to say, I have withdrawn from blogging. In the past few months, I have posted reviews and Cover Lust posts. Not much more. I used to feel the fire of wanting to write about hot topics in the book world burning through me. Not so much now. While I want to expand my writing here on my blog, part of me is also fiercely afraid of doing so.

I have always drawn a very thick and uncrossable line between my private, "real world" life and my online blogging presence. I don't do vlogs. I rarely post pictures of myself. I find it hard to take my online friendships with other book lovers into the rest of my life. I've cut back on the number of author and blogger friend requests I accept on my personal Facebook account. (No offense meant to you if I don't accept your friend request! You're better off finding me here on Facebook.) Whenever someone in my "real world" life mentions that they have read my blog, I sputter out a nervous laugh and blush fiercely.

The blogs I have been reading lately plunge deep into their writers' lives and discuss all of their joys and worries, good and bad points. I like reading them because it feels like I'm reading a first-person novel. Part of me wants to have that sort of candidness and authenticity in talking about myself and my insecurities, but the only outlet through which I have been perfectly honest is in my dozens of handwritten journals, and those will be private until the day I die. I admire the honesty and authenticity of today's memoirs and blogs (well, so much as any form of written and edited communication can be considered honest and authentic, but that's a discussion I'll save for my Victorian Literature & Culture seminar classmates), but I struggle in revealing that much of myself for others to read about and judge.

The great part about the blogging and memoir culture is that readers find community and connection through personal accounts. Part of me longs to join that community, but a stronger part of me sadly withdraws even more.

I think that as book bloggers, most of us already keep a large part of our lives off our blogs. Oftentimes there feels like an invisible circle of acceptable topics that we book bloggers can blog about, and if we blog outside of those topics, we lose followers. (I admit, I have been guilty of unfollowing people on account of how they became non-book bloggers. It's funny, because now I am thinking about scaling back on the number of book blogs I follow, so that I can expand my blog-reading repertoire without being overwhelmed.) So I'm curious: How much do you, as a book blogger, feel like you must only post about book-related topics? What outlets do you have for when you want to write about non-book topics? How do you think you'd gauge your level of interest for any non-bookish posts I may write in the future? How do you maintain the balance between your online persona and your real-life person?


Happy Valentine's Day. :)

Discussion: Professionalism, Presence, and Their Influences on the Reading Experience

Back when I started reading YA in the early 2000s, authors were still unapproachable mythical figures to me. They were usually nothing more than a bio blurb and still photo on the back jacket flap of a book, plus maybe a website if he or she had it. All I knew about them was that, in my mind, they were celebrities, but they were celebrities with no trashy tabloids following their every moves, exposing all their secrets to the whole wide world. In those days, authors were pretty much equivalent to their books, and that was that.

hotdesign.com

Of course, that's hardly the case nowadays. Nearly every YA author now, especially debut authors, have blogs, Twitter accounts, and Facebooks on top of just the standard noninteractive author website. Author presence on the Internet is often incorporated into a publisher's marketing plan for books: if a debut author does not have a blog prior to their book being published, they are often encouraged by their publishers to start one. Even authors who have written dozens of award-winning books over several decades practically need to establish an online presence, else they will likely not capture the attention of the modern audience.

It is because of this shift in book publicity, more so than because I started blogging about books, that has caused my reading experience to change. Very rarely now can I read a book and have it stand on its own. When I read now, I almost always think about what I know about the author, either from my personal interactions with him or her, or the way he or she presents him/herself online. Nowadays I often get to know the author through Twitter or their blog posts before I read his or her book. This is totally different from my reading experiences even just a few years ago, when finding out more about an author came only after I had read his or her book.

This has both a positive and negative effect on a number of reading- and blogging-related things, but for this post I am going to stick only to the reading experience itself--that is, the act and enjoyment of reading the author's book. It's positive because an author's online presence may actually do as the publishers want and cause me to pick up a book. It may be that the author's tweets make me laugh, or I find their blog posts well-written or thought-provoking. Sometimes I'm surprised when I finally read their book and discover that it's so different from their online presence. This has been both a good or bad thing in the past.

It's negative when an author's online behavior causes me to rethink my support of them through reading, buying, or reviewing their books. There have been instances in the past when I've really enjoyed an author's book(s), only to discover in some not-so-obscure corner of the Internet that he or she has behaved in ways I find deplorable: immaturely ragging on people they disagree with almost to the point of online harassment, expressing their opinions in a narrow-minded or offensive manner, belittling the intelligences of their YA audience.

What do you do when you come across something like that? I can no longer not let it influence my decision to support that author's books...and it is my opinion that neither should I, as a consumer, be expected to separate the two. Publishers should know that with their push to incorporate authors' online presence into marketing and publicity, they run the risk of it having the opposite effect on readers. I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as good publicity vs. bad publicity: it's what you choose to do with the available opportunities for publicity that determines its effect on my reading decisions. If you choose to assert your right to mouth off, insult people, and express your controversial opinion on a sensitive subject--and I am not saying you don't have the right to do so--just keep in mind what the consequences regarding your public image and royalty statement may be.

Consider how this occurs in other forms of media and entertainment. Does hearing about Lindsay Lohan's messy and rehab-oriented behavior, or Nicholas Cage's debt and tax evasions, or Tiger Woods' adulterous behavior influence the way you approach their more professional performances? For me it unequivocally does. I can no longer rewatch The Parent Trap or Mean Girls (and both are movies I love, by the way, no shame) without thinking about how Lindsay has gone downhill since then. And I'm less inclined to watch any of Nicholas Cage's future movies because of the fact that I now know he is an extravagant spender with poor finance skills. I mean, dude, you're a multimillionaire. I don't know whether to be more impressed or embarrassed for you that you are able to blow through your seven-figure paychecks.

I'm not trying to say that, because of their authorly status, authors should only be considered their public persona. Of course you are human beings as well, individuals who are also entitled to your personal opinions. But anything that involves a public sphere such as the Internet requires self-policing. Even bloggers--all bloggers, regardless of site traffic or your blog's focus--cannot escape this fact. For example, I am not going to write ranty, ill-informed, and offensive posts about things that irritate the heck out of me. I try to limit my use of profanity online (okay, and in person too). I don't start prolonged arguments in comments that spiral into passive-aggressive personal attacks that have very little to do with the original point of dissention. In fact, I prefer not to make personal attacks online, period. (I'll save ranty moments for in-person conversations if they are necessary, thanks.)

This does not mean I'm Switzerland. Of course I have opinions and make them; you, dearest blog readers, of all people, would know that. But it's about presentation. It's about the way you make your point. And it's also about the willingness to be open to dialogue and dissenting viewpoints, but that's another topic for another post, don't worry I'm already working on that. I may even agree with your opinion, but if you choose to present your opinion in a close-minded, unintelligent, and vindictive manner--in other words, if you choose to be disrespectful when speaking your mind--then you lose my respect. And this has happened to me before, with both authors and bloggers, so it's not just a hypothetical situation.

Yes, the Internet allows for more anonymity, and people are always bolder with the safety of anonymity. Sometimes, this anonymity turns into bad, even terrifying, situations, such as with the influx of cyber-bullying that has caused too many people to commit suicide this year. But don't forget that things on the Internet are very rarely truly anonymous. There are always ways to track down who said what, if you have the time and resources. Things published on the Internet will stay there forever, even if you choose to delete them later. The Internet has given us more freedom, but freedom does come at a price, and if you're not careful, you may be paying dearly for it.

So...what do you guys think? Have you ever been influenced, either positively or negatively, by an author's online presence? Can you separate an author's behavior from your enjoyment of his or her book? Should you? Does this professional/respectful online presence apply to bloggers as well? Should it?

A Discussion on Negative Reviews

Recently I've come across several posts written by authors in which they expressed their frustration and disappointment over negative reviews of their books written by bloggers. In these negative reviews, the reviewers essentially mocked, bashed, and personally attacked the author, his/her writing, and his/her book. This is not the first time something like this has come up, nor will it be the last.

Now, this is not a debate in which I will take one side or the other. We have all formulated our own opinions about this tricky overlapping spot in the world of writing, publishing, blogging, reviewing, and befriending people. I think it's safe to say that everyone needs to have thick, porous skin: the thickness to let the ridiculous bounce off, and the porous to let in alternate ways of thinking that you might not have considered before.

Here's what I think:

I think it's absolutely essential that we all be honest, straightfoward, and open-minded. Do you realize how many conflicts that escalate into something much, much worse could be avoided if the opposing parties just had an open and civil dialogue about it? So if a book really didn't work for a reviewer, it is that reviewer's right (and I would say responsibility, but I'm not saying that you need to go shout from the rooftops, "THIS BOOK SUCKS. DON'T EVER READ IT" aka the "anti-recommendation") to express his or her opinion about it, and why that book didn't work for him or her. If the book comes up in discussion with a group of people, I think the reader/reviewer has the right to quietly and politely express that the book didn't work for him/her, and to let that influence the reading decisions of the other people in whatever way it may.

It does NOT, however, give the reviewer the right to mock or attack the story's elements or the author's decisions when it comes to plot, characterization, etc.

Sure, we're pretty confused when we find, say,  yet another dependent, breathless, helpless, luuurv-me-or-I-have-no-reason-to-live protagonist in YA paranormal romance. But we don't have the right to write something in our review along the lines of, "I have NO idea why the author would EVER create such a brainless, spineless character. Also, I don't agree with said character's [decision 1], [decision 2], [decision 3]!"

Readers and reviewers, it's not our place to question the decisions that the author makes for his or her book. Those decisions were made a long time before the book reached our hands. To question those things would be like us whining about why a book character has green eyes instead of brown, or why an actor's costume contains a lot of blues and not purples, or why the MC has a soft spot for bad boys instead of nice guys. Those are set in stone: they are not for us to criticize.

I think there's a difference between a character making stupid decisions, and a character making stupid decisions that feel artificial to us. It can actually be a good thing when we get emotionally invested in a story and want to yell at the character, "What are you doing??? Why did you just say/do/think that??? Auuughhh!" But if a character does something that just makes us roll our eyes, or blink and mutter, "What?", or--worse--not care at all, I think that's, for lack of a better word, critique-able. If the character does something that's supposed to make us want to yell at them but instead causes us to react differently (e.g. roll our eyes or, God forbid, laugh), that disjuncture between intent and effect is something I think can, and maybe even should, be noted in a critical review. It's a tricky distinction, the one between author's intent and actually manifested reaction from the audience, but I think it's the crucial one.

The authors who wrote the blog posts also mentioned that the reviewers who had written the negative reviews were aspiring authors themselves, and they warned that this sort of unprofessional behavior will reflect on them badly when it comes time for these aspiring authors to query and make connections within the publishing world. I'm not disagreeing with them: professionalism is all the more important now that the Internet makes things so informal and accessible, and things that get on the Internet typically stay there forever. So you do have to watch how you present yourself online. I have watched both authors and bloggers get slammed for poor online conduct.

However, I'm not discouraging you from writing critical reviews, as long as it's done professionally, and all personal attacks remain out of the discussion. I think that it's natural for aspiring authors to examine books from a writer's point of view. I'm an aspiring author myself, and I always try to look for logical consistency within a book: Are the characters' behaviors believable? If fantastical elements are involved, do they follow the "grammar" of their world and not violate their own rules? Does the writing effectively portray what the author intends it to do? These are what I write about when I have to write a critical review. In no way do I wish to make a personal attack on the author. Would it really be that hard to take an extra 10 seconds before posting and put yourself in another's shoes, think about how you'd feel if someone said those things about your writing? Yeah, not so great, I'd imagine. So there's no need to make disparaging comments such as "I have no idea how [book name]/[author] got published." What if someone were to say that about your book in the future?

Sometimes, an author's writing just won't do it for you. And sometimes, authors, a blogger's reviewing style won't do it for you. So then you just quietly stay out of one another's way. Know what works for you and what doesn't, and immerse yourself in as little negative stimuli as possible. Neither party has the right to spread around your opinion as The Gospel. Trying to force upon others your opinion that "This blogger sucks, avoid his/her reviews" or "This author sucks, don't ever read his/her books" is the most obnoxious invasion of the private/public sphere disjuncture that can be done. It's okay if you didn't connect with someone's writing, and it's okay to express that politely, as long as you make it clear that it's YOUR opinion. It is NOT okay to try to push your opinions at others, or to think that anyone who doesn't share your opinion is idiotic and not worthy of being heard.

That is all.

What Makes a Good Reviewer?

The answer to that question is probably best said by a classmate of mine, an extremely talented girl a year younger than me. She's talking about music journalism here, but I think it's so applicable to any other type of writing, particularly reviews:

"The mark of a good music critic is the ability to describe a piece of music so that a listener who has not heard the song can hear exactly what the writer is hearing. It's impossible, but what else can I do but try?

"I love 'Rocky Raccoon' because it's imperfect and atypical. I like it because Paul McCartney's mouth is too close to the microphone, and you can hear him swallowing. His diction isn't very good, and the words seem to roll off his tongue, not quite making it over the edge. The melody is simple, and the lyrics are effortless. Paul's crooning tone adds vulnerability to the song, but the smoothness of the lyrics and the languorous movement of Ringo's downbeat and George's strumming guitar give the tune a lighthearted ambiance." © I.N. 2010

If you can't hear exactly what she's talking about in her description, then pigs are probably flying. I've never heard this song before but I can practically hear it playing right next to me, reading that.

This, friends, is what it means to be a reviewer, or really, a writer of anything. It's describing something in such a way that someone who has no expertise in the subject can almost perfectly understand what you're talking about.

Don't get me wrong: it's definitely hard. It takes lots of practice and direct/indirect exposure to the field that you're writing about and lots of trial and error. As well as a bit of talent. Yes, I believe that people are born and/or shaped to be predisposed to some activities and interests over others, but even that's not enough to be good at what you're doing. It also involves a certain degree of humility, of actually LISTENING to criticism and learning from it, and then learning to separate the good criticism from the so-so criticism.

The way I see it, to write--to transfer anything from thought to language--is to communicate. Doesn't matter if you're only scribbling half-formed sentences in your journal, or drafting an article that's going to appear in the New York Times. They might be different levels of writing, but it's all writing when it comes down to it. To write is to communicate, which means to have an audience. And by "audience," I mean anything from a half-second, grimacing glance before you trash/burn/otherwise destroy what you just wrote, or the legions of readers who will discover and rediscover your writing for centuries to come.

The easiest audience to write for is, arguably, yourself. That's because you know yourself, you can take shortcuts with your writing and still be able to decipher what you are talking about. The more people read your stuff, however, the harder it is to write, and the less easy it is to define the qualities of a work that make people continue to read it generations after it was originally written. What is the reason Homer is still read and taught today? What about Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu, who actually wrote in another language? What is it about their writings that have withstood the tests of time, evolving audiences, and even languages?

Here we go back to that intangible definition of writing that transcends individual language and experiential limitations. As a book reviewer, I strive to describe the book I'm reviewing to myself... my YA-loving friends... readers in general... non-reviewers... my mother's cousin's husband's sister's youngest son's best friend, who HATES reading. On and on and on, attempting to reach whoever manages to stumble across this speck of a blog in this corner of the infinite Internet universe. With every bit of writing I do, blogging or non-blogging-related, I am thinking about audience. Because, from a sociocultural perspective, in our world, those who have language are those who succeed. Sure, you should definitely write for yourself, all of your writing should reflect YOU, but at the same time, the "you" is a form of audience as well.

Language is a construct to bridge--nay, to organize--human thoughts and consciences. It necessarily requires the existence of an audience. And it is the act of a good writer/reviewer that we are able to communicate our thoughts about something to someone who knows nothing about it. It doesn't matter how the reviewer goes about it: they can be snarky, biting, insulting, raving, obsequious. The attitude with which one reviews something is not what I'm talking about right now (and is subject for a different conversation at another time); what I'm talking about right now is the act of communication. My favorite book reviewers have that ability to let me really get what he/she wants to say about the book. And that's what I'm looking for when it comes to writing.

Changing Reading Habits

Have you ever regretted starting your book blog?

That may be putting it a bit harshly. What I think I mean to say is: Have you ever wondered what your life would be like without your book blog? If you had never started it? If you quit now?

I do. I feel that, inevitably, having a blog has affected my reading habits and preferences. And not all of it is for the better. Yes, I've been exposed to a ton more YA literature since the inception of this blog. Whereas I barely read any YA during my first two years of college, in 2009 I read over 200 books, most of them YA. The number of books I own has multiplied significantly, as has my TBR pile. Now I will never be for a lack of something to read.

And yet, it is also this abundance of books, choices, and opportunity that seems to be a burden at times. How many times have we looked at our piles and piles of books to be read and been at a loss for what we want to read next? How many times have we guiltily picked up a book to read that wasn't from our gargantuan review pile? How many times have I had book A.D.D., or a reading slump, and then felt horrible that I wasn't reading reading reading all the time, because I have more books than I probably will ever be able to finish in my lifetime, if this pace of book acquisition and publication and lusting after not-yet-released books continues?

I'm fairly sure that there have been studies that have shown that having too many choices may not be the best thing for human beings. I mean, have you ever gone into a supermarket and been overwhelmed by all the choices you could have just for one measly jar of pasta sauce? Do I want the gourmet brand, or the generic store label? Do I want basil-flavored sauce, or sauce with extra cheese? Should I buy the too-big-for-just-me 24oz jar and save a few cents, or spend more money on a smaller size? I just want some pasta sauce, dangit!!

Sometimes, I think having a book blog is bad for my mental health.

(Then again, it wasn't very stable to begin with. I am a weird being. My friends can attest to that.)

I've been told by well-meaning people, just step away from your blog for a while. Take a break. You deserve it. But that is, of course, easier said than done. I LOVE retreats--my idea of a vacation is to go somewhere beautiful and secluded for myself for a period of time--but the thought of being away from the YA industry world, of not being on top of new releases, deals, Twitter, and whatnot, is, frankly, terrifying. I remember the early months of 2009, when I had just started blogging, and how torturously out of the loop I felt (and was) about everything YA. There I was, two years out of reading YA regularly, and I was suddenly being bombarded with years and years' worth of recommendations, news, new and old author news, and more. There is always that insecurity slump several months into blogging, when you've pretty much established a working routine and are consistently producing material, and yet there is so much more out there than you can handle. You feel like you can never catch up. You falter. You sink into the blues. How, you say to yourself, can you ever think of becoming an established and well-respected blogger if you can't even keep up with just general news and be "in the know"?

Do I want to go back to that state? You bet I don't. My ever-expanding knowledge of old, current, and upcoming YA lit is something I worked hard to get and am very proud of. Who doesn't want to be an expert in something? I love that I can recommend good YA books to my friends who enjoy YA but are not as psychotically involved as I am. Even attending TAC 2009 I felt so out of the loop: people were just jumping into conversations with book recommendation and author name after book recommendation and author name. I couldn't keep up. I felt enormously incompetent and redundant. 2010 has been a much better year for me in terms of keeping up with YA news.

I think I'm afraid that if I stop (and sometimes I so very much want to), I'll never be able to start again.

How has blogging changed your reading habits? I think I have a much lower tolerance for books I don't connect with now. In the past, I'd most likely continue slogging through a book even if in the end it wasn't my thing. These days, I really wish I could put down books I don't connect to within the first 30 pages. I mean, come on: I have several hundred books in my TBR pile, I really would prefer to spend my time reading books I enjoy, thank you very much. But such is the commitment one makes when one blogs, the commitment to give more attention and patience to a book sent to you for review than you would've given it had it just been a book from your own purchases or library. I still haven't found a good balance between giving a review book that's not my thing a chance and knowing when to set it aside. (Note to self: work on that in the future.)

Yeah, yeah, I know about the Reader's Bill of Rights, that I have the right to put down a book if I'm not interested in it. But being a human being, being social, taking part in this dance of relationships and communication and etiquette, means that there is an exchange of trust and responsibility taking place. Whether we want to or not, admit it or not, we pay more attention to those things we have more connecting threads with, that we have more personal interest in. Tell me you'd give more of a chance to a book written by a friend, than one written by someone whom you know nothing about, because he or she is one of the last holdouts in this 21st-century social media publicity world.

I don't like the panicky feeling I get in my chest when my gaze falls on the boxes and boxes of books that I say I intend to read "sometime in the future." Reading shouldn't give me anxiety attacks. When I go on long vacations with limited Internet access, I prefer taking classics with me, which does nothing for the appalling size of my TBR review pile. And I know I spend more time each day online, checking all my blogging- and reading-related sites, than I do writing or reading.

Can I really say that I have healthier reading habits now than I had, say, three years ago?

I'm not quite sure I have an answer to that.

I'm leaving for a cruise up to glorious Canada with my aunt, uncle, and family friend tomorrow, with limited Internet access and phone for the next five days. I have scheduled posts, of course (the only way I can manage to post all the reviews I've written), but I'll essentially be offline until Thursday. It'll be like a mini-retreat for me. In the meantime, I'd love to hear what you guys think about the blogging experience, and whether or not it has changed your reading habits. Is there anything you miss about not having a blog?

(Disclaimer: This is by no means something like the beginning of the end for me. I'm pretty sure I will continue blogging and reviewing books at least until I finally get a book published--after which I should probably keep my mouth more shut in an attempt at industry neutrality. I just needed to get this off my chest, this thing that has kept inspiration hidden from me for the last month or so.)

A YA Community Thanksgiving Post

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. The food, the family, the love that is almost tangible in the small spaces between loved ones. And the ever brilliant Adele of Persnickety Snark has started a mini-celebration that is not just limited to one country: a YA Community Thanksgiving, where we are encouraged to post about what we love about the YA blogging community, link to Adele's main post, and to comment on at least five other blogs who've participated, especially ones you didn't know of before. After recent drama, I'm more than willing to think about happy things, so here goes!

Note: I wrote this post in several chunks, one of which was late at night and in a strange, semi-giddy mood, so the tone and writing style may have, er, changed rather abruptly throughout. Oops? Well, all the more fun for you!

Why I Am Thankful for the YA Blogging Community

1. I'm finally meeting people who share my interests. I'm sure that many of us have felt isolated more than a few times in our lives, with our love of books (sometimes over people), written words (over dialogue), and fiction (over reality). I read almost as much YA as I do now back when I was in high school, but I was always aware that it wasn't something I could talk about to many others, as most people didn't know the books I knew, or weren't half as passionate about reading as I was. It was something I did individually, secretly, almost shamefully, not knowing that there are indeed many people out there who love what I love, who support my passions and share them too. Which leads to Number 2...

2. I have something to talk about. I'm no good at small talk, which is probably a problem a lot of other bloggers have. (I hope I'm not generalizing too much when I'm supposing that many bloggers are at least partially introverts...?) I don't like talking about myself, or relating acquaintances' anecdotes for chuckles at cocktail parties. I can't for the life of me figure out how people are comfortable being the entertaining center of attention, regaling story after amusing story to a large group of people. But engage me in a one-on-one or small-group conversation about a YA book, or YA lit in general, or how YA lit can fit into education, and I have plenty to say, and more besides.

3. It builds my writing skills, and my confidence in them. I wrote a post about a similar topic several months ago, and I still stand by it. Not only do writing posts, creating reviews, chatting with blogger friends on Twitter, and writing emails that range from professional (to publishers and authors when I ask for blog interviews) to friendly (author friends) to cheeky (uhh, everyone, every once in a while?) all give me practice with my writing and finding my voice, I'm also much more confident about my writing skills, and cautiously optimistic that I might be able to become a published author one day. And this is thanks to all of your support, of course. I'm not one to praise lightly or ingenuously, and so I sincerely hope that the supportive comments I receive on my posts are indicative of my strengths and growth (and supahpowahhhs!) as a writer.

4. You can find--and fall in love with--books (and their respective authors) you otherwise would've never picked up. Case study: the lovely author Lauren Mechling contacted me early in the fall of 2009, asking if I'd be interested in reviewing a book of hers that was coming out in January 2010. She had read my review policy (hallelujah! someone who did thorough research before contacting me!) and knew that I don't really like cute and fluffy books about, ahem, bitchy teenagers, but that she was hoping I'd give her and her only slightly cute and fluffy book a try.

I am SO glad I did. I was delighted by both Dream Girl and Dream Life and now I just want Lauren to publish MOARRR BOOOOOOKS. It's an extraordinary feeling when you get to prove yourself wrong.

5. Getting to talk to and befriend authors. Carrying over from the last point, Lauren and I now send each other random emails every once in a while, just to say hi, because, um, we can! I feel truly blessed to know each and every author I have gotten to know. I may not be head over heels in love with their books all the time, but they are such wonderful people, and I like that there can be this separation between author and book, when once (when I was younger) they were like the same thing to me, and authors were like intimidating celebrities who, like, lived in mansions, wrote with gold-tipped fountain pens or on typewriters, and didn't do "human" things, like eat, or poop. Probably.

6. You can spread your passions. You can do it in extremely silly (but still ultimately satisfying) ways, like convincing your blogger friends to pick up a book that you rave about 365 days a year, and having them become as equally evangelical about the book as you are (i.e. when Meg picked up Robin Brande's Fat Cat at my recommendation, and it was love forever and ever, both between blogger-book and blogger-blogger).

Or you can do it in a powerful and awe-inspiring way, such as how blogger Harmony of Harmony Book Reviews started PAYA to increase awareness of and attention to YA lit in Pennsylvanian libraries, all the more important now because of our huge statewide public library budget cuts. I have only ever dreamed of doing something like this, and it amazes me that there are extremely talented people out there who can make my vague daydreams a reality.

7. It helps me be more attuned to my communication strengths and weaknesses. What I've learned about me in social situations: I communicate best through writing. I'm better in one-on-one conversations than group talks. When lots of people are talking, I clam up, get this look on my face like I'm either falling asleep or horrified, and try to extricate myself as subtly as possible. I like talking about books, but I don't like talking to other book lovers who feel the need to go on and on in LOUD VOICES about how they've already read EVERY book you bring up. For your entertainment, an example:

Me: "You like YA books too? Cool! Have you read this book by debut novelist Lauren Oliver? It's called Before I F--"

Them: "BEFORE I FALL OMIGOD OMIGOD YES I READ IT I LOVE IT SO MUCH I RECOMMEND IT TO EVERYONE I KNOW."

Me: "Oh. Um. Awesome! *looks at bookstore's display table* Oh, look. They have Incarceron on displ--"

Them: "OOOOOOH I JUST READ THAT ONE, LIKE, LAST NIGHT IT WAS SO GOOD I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN I LOST SO MUCH SLEEP OVER IT ISN'T IT CREEEEPY AND JUST LIKE SO SO GOOD."

Me: "Okay. Well. Um. I'm gonna go eat more food now. Bye!"

(Unfortunately this actually happened to me.)

But more on book people annoyances--and my own social oddities--another time. The point is, I'm beginning to know what works for me, and what doesn't. And I learn from my embarrassingly awkward moments at author signings and try to be more myself next time. I'm hoping I can bring all these revelations with me to BEA so that I don't end up being overwhelmed and hating humanity and myself by the end of the day. (Sorry, did I mention that I'm about as introverted as introverts can get? You should see my Myers-Briggs personality test score.)

8. I discover new things to love outside of books. One phrase: Khy and Glee. Thank you.

9. Every day, I learn five new things. Why five? I dunno. It could be another number if you'd like. All I'm saying is that I learn so many things through blogging, and in so many areas. In writing up posts, I practice my writing skills. In organizing blog tours for Traveling to Teens, I learn what does and doesn't work for publicity and email organization. In reading others' reviews, I am able to figure out the things I pay attention to in reviews. And just reading many, many books alone, I add every day to my mental list of things I like and dislike about YA lit, and what I think I'll focus on doing in my own WIPs.

Blogging has been the greatest "class" I've ever taken, on a "subject" that's hardly present in formal education, and my fellow bloggers are the best teachers.

-

I'm sure I could go on for longer but I'm going to stop before I hit double digits and then go, well, I'm not that far from triple digits now, why don't I just go on? Anyway, even writing this post has put me in a good mood. You see the power that you guys have? Now why don't you join in the celebration over at Adele's blog?

Happy YA Community Thanksgiving, everyone!

Plagiarism in the Blogosphere

Recently it was brought to my attention by several of my blogger friends that they have spotted disturbing similarities between their reviews and the reviews posted by a certain YA blogger who shall remain anonymous for the time being. They found more than just a handful of structurally similar reviews, and encouraged me to look through the blogger's reviews as well, to see if I might find any that were similar to any of mine.

So I took their advice. I spent two hours looking through her reviews (lucky there weren't very many of them to start with), comparing them with the ones of mine that have been posted on my blog.

I am horrified, angry, and very, very disappointed.

Plagiarism.org quotes the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as defining "plagiarism" as:

• to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
• to use (another's production) without crediting the source 
• to commit literary theft
• to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward.

All of the following are considered plagiarism:

• turning in someone else's work as your own
• copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
• failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
• giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
• changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
• copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not (see our section on "fair use" rules)

From Plagiarism.org, emphases mine.

(See what I did here? I copied content from the website, and I made sure to make it clear that the information came from there, as well as provided a link to their site if you want more info. This is called proper citation.)

Today's teenagers are the first generation to have grown up with Internet and computers readily available for their entire lives. (Even I didn't really understand the use of the Internet until I was in middle school.) With all sorts of information available for anyone to read on the Internet, it is all too easy to cross certain lines, to not understand that Internet DOES NOT EQUAL free and for the taking.

It is one thing to read another blogger's review and go, "Hmmmm. I really agree with a lot of what he/she is saying, especially with such-and-such point. He/she said it really well, and I'd like to mention his/her review in my own as being an inspiration and supplementary material to mine."

It is quite another to have your reviews sound like you wrote one sentence of your review, got stuck, opened up the other blogger's review to see how he/she did it, and then turn back to your own to write down a paraphrased/slightly reworded sentence, and so on and so forth for the entirety of 3-4 paragraphs...and then to pretend that your content is your own. Which is what has happened in this blogger plagiarism case.

Plagiarism is not just the direct copying of uncredited quotes and trying to pass them off as your own. It is ALSO taking another person's ideas and/or sentence structure. To paraphrase without proper citation, or to break out your internal thesaurus, does not mean that you have produced original content.

Sure, I'll say that there are only so many original ideas out there, and that some of your ideas may sound like others'. As a crazy-cool example of this, read the Hunger Games plot study that the brilliant First Novels Club did comparing THG to mythology. You can also check out the HarperTeen reprints of Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Romeo & Juliet to see that Stephenie Meyer evidently got her inspiration for her Twilight books from these classics.

But the difference between these examples and this blogger plagarism case is that these inspirations are accredited. Suzanne Collins does not hide the fact that she was inspired by Theseus & the Minotaur and Spartacus (and this here is a properly cited paraphrasing of the First Novels Club's words). Giving credit where credit is due is of paramount importance in our "no tolerance for plagiarism" society, especially as accusations of plagiarism can have long-term effects on the perpetrator, such as college and job rejections, and everyone needs to be all the more careful that they have not "unconsciously plagiarized" other people's works.

Of course, here is where the debates intensify. My blogger friends have emailed this blogger with evidence to her plagiarism presented in neat Word documents and very politely asked if she would remove her plagiarized reviews and rewrite them. It is ambiguous at this point whether or not the blogger will really do that, because we have gotten a good sense that she does not realize how serious her actions are, and what the consequences of her having done this can be. If the most common perpetrators of plagiarism nowadays--teenagers who've grown up with astoundingly easy access to the Internet and information--do not believe that what they're doing is plagiarism, how can we make them aware of the seriousness of their actions?

Some of you may recall how, several months ago, a German teen debut novelist was found to have lifted passages of her book from another novelist's. (See this Time article for more details.) What truly frightened me about the incident, however, was that the teen novelist was unrepetant about her actions, "claiming that 'true originality doesn't exist anyway, only authenticity' and insist[ing] on her 'right to copy and transform' other people's work, taking a stand against what she called the 'copyright excesses' of the past decade" (quoted from Time.com: "German Teen Novelist: Plagiarism or Sampling?").

First of all, there is hardly a thing as "copyright excesses." Says Plagiarism.org on copyright laws:

At one time, a work was only protected by copyright if it included a copyright trademark (the © symbol). According to laws established in 1989, however, works are now copyright protected with or without the inclusion of this symbol.

Which only goes to stress that plagiarism, even of bloggers' material that is posted online for public perusal, is WRONGWRONGWRONG. Even unintentional plagiarism is a serious crime that, like intentional plagiarism, can be punishable in court:

While it is possible that you might write on the same topic as someone else, odds are that you will not have exactly the same ideas or express them in exactly the same way. It is highly unlikely that you would be accused of plagiarizing a source you have never read. Be careful, however, of "accidentally" plagiarizing from sources you have read and forgotten -- if your ideas turn out to have been influenced by a source that you read but failed to cite for any reason, you could be guilty of plagiarism. [http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_plagiarism_faq.html, emphases mine]

So no, I don't believe this blogger's claims that she "subconsciously" wrote structurally and phraseologically similar reviews to mine and others'. Not after placing the reviews side by side, examining them line by line, and discovering identical syntaxes and more, from each individual line to the overall paragraph structure of the review. This is plagiarism, even if you didn't intend to exactly copy my work--and I'm not sure what the case is at this point. What you have done IS punishable by law, and your weak defenses for the originality of your work (subconscious influences, analyses for school projects) would NOT hold up in court.

I hope that this blogger will realize the seriousness of what she has done, rectify her plagiarized reviews immediately, and be all the more vigilant that she doesn't plagiarize again in the future, whether consciously or not.

How can you avoid plagiarizing?

Adele and Tirzah, two other bloggers whose reviews were plagiarized, have written great posts on this issue, and I highly suggest you read them (clicking on their names will get you to their respective posts). They have suggested that you not read others' reviews before writing your own, in order to avoid plagiarizing.

However, I am going to respectfully modify their advice. I don't know how possible it is to not look at reviews of a book before writing your own review. I'm afraid to count the number of times I go on Goodreads every day or open my Google Reader. There are also times when I've read reviews of a book beforehand that encouraged me to pick the book up. So yes, it's really hard to cut yourself off from reviews before writing your own.

My modified suggestion is that you be aware of any reviews you've read before writing your own, particularly the ones that resonated with you. Sometimes I come across well-written reviews that make me go, "Ah, that is almost exactly how I felt about this book!" And then I'll keep that blogger in mind, but I won't write my review with the same structure and phrases as the review I admired. It doesn't need to be that hard, really, to be more self-conscious when you're writing. If you've come across a review that really stuck with you, mention the blogger in your review. We loooove other bloggers who respectfully link back to us, and we love knowing that our reviews have influenced you to pick up the book!

BUT, we do NOT love when you paraphrase our ideas and words and pass them off as your own.

Get the picture?

Needless to say, the strongest emotion I feel right now is disappointment. I hope that the blogger who plagiarized off of my, Adele's, and Tirzah's reviews (and who knows who else she plagiarized off of?) now more clearly realizes the seriousness of her actions, and the life-altering consequences that may ensue if this behavior continues. (Did I mention you can go to court?) If you would please respect our requests that you remove your plagiarized reviews from your blog, we would appreciate it.

I don't think you want to know what can happen to you if you don't.

It is my sincerest wish that we all--bloggers, blog readers, authors, industry professionals--can learn from this incident and be all the more vigilant about our writing. And yeah, I remember being extremely frustrated as a teenager that I didn't seem to know what my own voice was, or if I even had one. It's taken me many, many years to finally feel like I have created some semblance of a writing style that I can call my own and be comfortable with. You should also check out Kristi the Story Siren's post about this issue, in which she talks about this very concept of finding your own blogger voice. Please help one another realize that turning to other published works for "inspiration," ideas, and sentence structure is an immoral--not to mention illegal--act. I really hope nothing like this will happen in the future.

ETA a list of bloggers who were affected by and/or posted about this issue:
Adele - http://www.persnicketysnark.com/2010/04/plagiarism-personal-account.html
Tirzah - http://www.thecompulsivereader.com/2010/04/just-reminder-paraphrasing-is.html
Kristi - http://www.thestorysiren.com/2010/04/my-one-piece-of-advice.html
Liz - http://myfavouritebooks.blogspot.com/2010/04/lets-talk-about-plagiarism-today.html
Lenore - http://presentinglenore.blogspot.com/2010/04/bloggers-behaving-badly-2-plagiarism-is.html

April is "Catch Up on Reviews" Month!

Happy April! If you are the type to come up with cool pranks (not me--although I have ideas, and that might change for my senior year) and search for plastic eggs containing treats (me--although the availability of this activity is severely limited), then you are going to have a good week, clearly. Me, I've just begun to climb out of a dark and deep hole of schoolwork that had basically sucked all my energy and sleep for the past four days. I hope I don't have to do that again anytime soon.

Anyway, since March was unofficially "Read Bought and Borrowed Books" for me, I'm declaring April to be "Catch Up on Reviews" Month! Authors and publishers who have sent me solicited books, rejoice. I will try to get them read this month even if I have to stay up late and fail classes to do so--toooootallllyyyy kidding at that, by the way. It was a joke, Swarthmore. A joke! I want to get as many review  books read before I go to BEA and my review pile threatens to drown me yet again.

Anyway. So do you guys have any reading plans for this glorious spring-beckoning month?

How Do You Use Ratings? Pt. 2

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post in which I broke down the rating system I use on my blog. It started as a way for me to collect my thoughts, but I really enjoyed the comments that people left on that post for me. It was fascinating to see all the different points of view; it just goes to show that, while we all love YA and reading, there are still a ton of differences among us, and no easy answer as to how to go about reviewing!

Today I want to talk about how I use ratings when looking for recommendations, surfing book networking sites, reading blogs, etc. I'm not sure how I'm to unify this post, so I think I'll do it in interview format, ask myself questions and answer myself. Let's see how this goes!

Audience: When you rate books, who do you rate them for?

(The picture on the right makes me giggle, btw.)

Well, that's the ultimate question, isn't it? Obviously we're all blogging with the small hope that someone out there will read our words. But it's perhaps also true that different review publications have different purposes when reviewing, and that understanding the publication's purpose goes a long way in the way in which we take its reviews. Or, in Lauren of I Was a Teenage Book Geek's comment in my first post, it's all about the CONTEXT.

Notable review publications such as Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, and School Library Journal cater to professional buyers of books. That means they're nice and concise, with only a few sentences of synopsis and review. These publications usually give the "starred" reviews that most authors and publishing companies consider really good, because this will bring the book to the attention of professional booksellers. These reviews generally mean less for the everyday consumer, and are generally not self-reflective: these publications don't have a "type" of book they give starred reviews to over others. Their reviews are written by a bunch of people, and so if one of them thinks the book is worthy of being placed in libraries, schools, book fairs, and more, the star will most likely be given.

This is opposed to many bloggers' reviews. We have the same goal of promoting good books to others, sure, but reviewing is also a reflective process for most of us: writing our reviews helps us understand what we like or dislike in books. At least that's what I've found to be the case with me. My blog is self-reflective: I know that some books I give 3-star ratings to are others' all-time favorites and/or extremely popular and/or generally raved about by consumers and professionals alike. But part of my rating process is figuring out how I enjoyed that book in relation to others I've read. My reviews can be influenced by what I read before and after. That's because I am an individual: I do not profess to hide behind a professional reviewer or site name (note my eponymous blog). Knowing that my reviews should be taken in the context of MY reading tastes will help you a lot when deciding whether or not reading my reviews is worth your time.

Do you look at star/number/grade ratings, or do you read the review and glean from it what you will?

I confess: I usually look at the star/number/grade rating first, then go back and read the review if I think I'll get something out of it. I know there are those of you who completely disregard the rating. But for me, ratings help ground me somewhere: I have a starting point for myself when I read the review. And once again, it's all about the context. Lenore doesn't use ratings on her reviews, but her Zombie Chickens for Dystopian February worked wonderfully because it was a unified theme: all dystopian books! Along the same lines, if it's someone who gives everything 5 stars, I usually don't even bother to read their reviews. They usually don't tell me anything about the quality of the book, only that they really really really really liked it. Really.

Where do you go to read reviews?

If I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to read a particular book, I usually go to Goodreads. Check out the book's overall rating, read several differently starred reviews, some from my friends, some from people I don't know. It's dangerous for me to get my expectations too high about a book (damn you, you bloggers who only write gushy-gushy 5-star rave reviews!), and so I like to read about both its strengths and weaknesses beforehand.

When I'm looking for new book recommendations, I tend to troll the blogs. (Hehe, "troll" the blogs. I didn't have to say that, but I just wanted to say it. Hehe.) Bloggers pretty much find sooner or later that there are a certain number of blogs they really connect with, whose reviews they truly take to heart. Just like a book is not for everyone, so a blogger can't be a perfect fit for everyone. I have a handful of blogs whose reviews I love reading for the fact that A) they are well-written, AND B) they have similar reading tastes to me. The "AND" is in important because a blog can be A and not B, or B and not A, and while I'll still read their reviews, they don't have as much of an influence on me as the A AND B blogs do. Troll the blogosphere (hehe, "troll"!!! I'm stopping now) long enough, and you'll find which blogs you enjoy and which ones you don't. Blog-reading is a personal affair, and you have the right to love a blog that others don't, or hate one that everyone gushes about. Just don't go aggressively public with your likes and dislikes.

I find that I don't read Amazon reviews often. I'm irritated by the way they set it up so that Vine readers or reviewers who post their reviews up as soon as the book is released have the best chance of appearing on the main page. I've found no good way of browsing the reviews, and I barely look at the ratings. I guess, for me, Amazon is really more a place I go for technical information--synopsis, release date, publisher--than for recommendations, although I'm thinking some authors might disagree with me.

Question from Ari: Are there ever books you regret giving them the ratings you did?

Ohh, this is a difficult question. Like I mentioned earlier, my reviews are invariably influenced by what I read before or after. I think this is hard to help: like, you think you like a book, and give it 5 stars, but then you read another book that so blows the first one away that you should you could give it 6 stars, or change the first book's rating to a 4. Also, reading tastes change over time: I realize that a lot of my 5-star ratings on Goodreads are carryover ratings from books I read over and over when I was younger. Most of them I probably wouldn't read again, and if I did, I'm not sure if I'd feel the same way about them. But will I change my rating? Usually not--and if I do, then not by much, perhaps a half star in either direction. (Except for Twilight. But that's a different story.)

As for whether or not I regret giving the ratings I did... Well, oftentimes I feel really bad about the reviews I've written for books I reviewed for blog tours that I didn't end up enjoying. Reading disappointing books is not a pleasant experience for anyone. Why should we have to read a book if we don't like it? (And also, why was it published in the first place? Grrr.) So I feel sad and rather masochistic when I have to put up a critical review of a book that was given me for review, and which I had to review for a tour. I wish I had known earlier that the book wouldn't be for me, so that I wouldn't have had to spend my time and my blog readers' time on that critical review. But do I regret the ratings I've given? No.

If you could start over with a new rating system, what would you do?

I'd very much like to play with the idea of using no ratings, and instead only giving, like, a big fat star or something for the books that I found exceptional. In that sense my reviews would be more like a Kirkus review, I suppose, which I'm not sure is the point of blogs. Eh. But that would allow me to point out the stellar books in the genres that I don't usually read. I just read this one book that my middle school self would have absolutely adored and probably reread about seven times. But my now-self couldn't justify giving it more than 3 stars...even though it's such a good book for middle school girls. With a "starred review" system, I could just write that--that it's something fantastic for tweens--in my review, and give it a star for being the top of its genre, and everyone would be happy and no one would go, "Oh, 3? Well, Steph gave it a mediocre rating. I'd better stay away from it then..."

But the problem is I like looking at ratings, as I stated earlier. Ah dear. The endless dilemma.

-

Now that you've heard from me (again), I have a few questions for YOU! Feel free to answer them in the comments below if you're interested, thanks! Reviews and ratings are an everchanging topic, and I have a feeling this won't be the last post in this series on ratings, as I completely didn't touch upon how authors/publishers may use reviews and ratings... :)

How do you use Amazon reviews?
Where do you go to read reviews and ratings?
Do you ever go back and change your ratings?
Who do you rate your books for?

How Do You Use Ratings? Pt. 1

Ratings are fickle things. Most authors I've talked to have a wary view of them, particularly of the typical 5-star sort you find on sites such as Goodreads or Amazon. Some bloggers rate books almost obsessively, minutely breaking their rating down into numerous components such as writing, character appeal, romance, ending, cover, etc. Other bloggers don't assign ratings to books.

For publishers--and please, correct me if I'm horrendously wrong, as I am simply going off intuition here--blog ratings most likely don't mean two craps: the most important part is getting word of the book out there, which publishers will do for their big-name titles, no matter how bad the book is or how negative the critical reception has been (see: Fallen. Heh. I couldn't resist it. Sorry. Moving on now). The thing that "matters" for authors and publishers seem to be the starred reviews from the big honchos of book reviewing: publications such as Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews (long may ye reign!)--and even their importance is a little murky and shifting with today's customer-as-reviewer economy.

So in what context, then, should the ratings assigned to books by bloggers and found on book social networking sites be considered? And how can we best use the legend/threat/customer-is-always-right thing that is ratings to ensure the most pleasant reading and recommendation experience for the greatest number of people?

This topic will be broken up into two parts. In the first, this post, I break down how I use my 5-point rating system, what it means when you see a particular rating attached to a particular book, and how the rating is affected by factors such as genre and expectations. In the second, a post perhaps a week or so from now, I will talk about how I, as a reader of books and blogs, use the ratings I come across in different aspects of the blogosphere and the online book community.

I mention briefly in my review policy that I use a rating scale of 1 to 5, with half-"stars" (we'll call them stars here so we're on the same page) given. I break my rating down in 3 categories: writing (how well the author conveys his/her intention through the style he/she uses), characters (dimensionality, believability, interestingness), and plot (pacing, predictability, originality). Of course my ratings are subjective and moody just like myself, which is why they only truly add up to the overall rating I assign the book about 25% of the time. The remaining 75% accounting for my arithmetically challenged ratings can be explained by the "invisible", subjective factors--which I will attempt to describe below.

Here, then, is my breakdown of ratings, and why they might mean different things for books from different genres, etc. Think of it as one of those "holistic" rubrics that English teachers hand out before timed or standardized essays, bwahahaha. Okay, not. And NOTE! The following descriptions apply only to ratings that appear on this blog. Since Goodreads doesn't allow half-stars, I sometimes have to consolidate.

Now, since I like to end on a good note...

1 star. A book whose published status I sincerely and horrifically question. It reads like a brainstorming of a first draft of a writing exercise assigned by the most mediocre writing program desperate money can buy, a writing exercise that should probably be discarded and erased from one's consciousness the minute it's turned in for a (bad) grade. Unsurprisingly, a lot of self-published books would fall into this category for me. Without the helpful hand of critique partners, agents, or editors, these authors have invariably published a piece of drivel that they self-inflate to be the best thing since, like, The Da Vinci Code. I'm appalled to even post a review of this book up anywhere, let alone let the name of its title cross my lips. It truly, honestly, sincerely-with-all-my-heart deserves to be returned to the bottom of the "past writing projects" file cabinet, and revised only when the author has enough distance from it that he/she can see its multiple large flaws and completely overhaul the idea. I've only given one 1-star review on my blog ever, thankfully.

1.5 stars. The lowest rating that I've given to a book published by an established and respectable publishing house, figuring as at least two professionals in the publishing industry must have liked it to have published it. These books are--and it can't be put any other way--quite bad. Often it's a novel written by an author who's written about 20 books prior to it, and thus their publishing company has probably lost sight of the fact that this? their latest manuscript? Quite subpar compared to their very first book, the one that helped them break into the industry, y'know? Characters are flat, plots are either unoriginal or poorly executed (i.e. I'm not engaged). The story remains always a "story" and never escapes the borders that fiction has erected around it.

2 stars. Books that I give 2 stars to are, it seems, those that were probably marketed to the wrong audience, or bad books that were marketed precisely to the only audience that is able to indulge in them. So here you've got your paranormal romance MG/YA bestsellers whose mediocre writing and unoriginal characters/plot are covered up by the fact that it's *gasp* TRUE, ETERNAL, AND UNDYING LUV! and *swoon* VAMPIRES!--and those YA books written by authors who probably should've stuck with writing adult or children's fiction. These books just miss the mark for me: most of these have an established fan base, but are not the types of books that I'd read and enjoy on my own.

2.5 stars. 3 stars is pretty much the cutoff point for books that I would've picked up on my own and have finished; ratings less than 3 indicate that it's not a book I'd recommend. There's nothing too wrong about books I give 2.5 stars to; like 2-star books, they're usually just the wrong book for me. What distinguishes a 2.5 from a 2 is that the 2.5s are, in fact, pretty well written in their genre. There's an audience for these books; again, the audience just wasn't me.

3 stars. Here's where things get trickier. I've noticed that most of the books I give 3 stars to fall into 2 groups: books that are not my type (girly, semi-predictable, white suburban middle-class, happily-ever-after) but that I would still recommend for people who enjoy that type of books, and books that were raved about by fellow book-lovers and, sadly, fell way short of my expectations. The last 3-star book I reviewed that fell into the first group (let's call it Type A) was The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg--a perfectly pleasant and enjoyable teen romance novel that wasn't quite my cup of tea due to its predictability, saccharine romance, cardboard supporting characters, and cookie-cutter whiteness. I specifically named that example because I was still rather entertained by said book--call it a guilty pleasure, if you will. I won't give an example of a Type B 3-star book, as that is less flattering, but let's just say that Type B 3-star books tend to be books that have been long hyped about in the YA blogosphere and Twittersphere, and whose 5-star ratings on Goodreads typically consist of fangirly gushings of "OHMIGOD this is the best book I've ever read! Girl X and Boy Y are sooooo cute together!" and the like. As for some 2.5-star books, Type B books generally get a welcome reception into the world; it just wasn't really for me.


3.5 stars. Again, can mostly be divided up into Type A and Type B. A Type A novel (refresher: not the type of book that's usually on my radar, usually on account of excessive girliness, predictability, and commercialized appeal) that I would probably consider one of my favorites if, you know, I was the type of reader who loved those types of books. Type B books earn 3.5 stars if I can see the author's intentions and admire it but the intentions didn't quite manifest themselves completely in the book, or if it's a book I've been looking forward to that falls just a cut below my really liking it and wanting to recommend it to lots of people. I've also noticed that 3.5 tends to be the highest rating I give to middle-grade novels sent to me for review. Guess that means I'm a YA snob, eh? Ahh, I tried. Consider a 3.5 rating on a middle-grade novel very, very good, and pass it on to the middle schooler in your life.

4 stars. Okay, honestly? I know there are two more levels of ratings above this and all, but I just might love 4-star books the most, and this is hard for me to explain. There are several "categories" of 4-star books. There's the (usually) paranormal romance book with mass audience appeal that I still enjoyed despite the fact that it was most likely a done-before paranormal romance idea (at the most basic level: human girl with the irresistible supernatural male crush, magical element that threatens to keep the two lovers apart) with writing that reminds me of the first time I read Twilight: "Well, golly, this is easy to read. If she can get this published, so can I!" There's the good book written by the established YA author that will easily be up for awards, despite the fact that the story idea wasn't all that original and/or interesting and probably would not have been published had the manuscript been submitted by a first-time novelist. There's the aforementioned Type A novel that completely blows all my preconceptions away and makes me fall in giddy--though certainly not eternal and undying--love with it (e.g. Lovestruck Summer by Melissa Walker--great book!). There's the book with the so-so execution but brilliantly unique concept. There's the book that's funny in the way I love: smart, witty, and neither condescending nor forced. Essentially, humor I could never in my life accomplish (examples: Dream Life by Lauren Mechling; Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have by Allen Zadoff).

And then there are The Books. Ohhh, The Books. How I love you. Most of the time I don't even know why I only give you 4 stars and not higher, because I usually cannot stop talking about you to other people and driving them crazy with my recommending it. These books are great: original concept, top-of-the-line writing, entertaining, enthralling, eye-opening. These I would love to read again for the first time; these I usually end up buying the finished copy of for my permanent book collection. And maybe that's where the distinction lies: I'd love to read these books again for the first time, because they made the experience of reading so incredible for me. Some of these I'd never even dare to learn from, as their level of writerly sophistication is so utterly different from whatever writerly sophistication I'd like to hope I can master one day. And sometimes these books have a great message that's slightly hampered by the author's writing style--a style that's good but not outstanding, not really something they can fix, and yet something that readers can, for the most part, ignore in favor of the story. Books in this special 4-star category include: Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves, Soulless by Gail Carriger, The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee, The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan, The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez.

 

You can usually tell which type of 4-star book it is by the tone and content of my review.

4.5 stars. Really, really good books that seem to have very little unifying theme other than the fact that I believe they're all written in the style that best expresses what they're trying to express. Whereas with The Books in the 4-star range I'd love to read them again for the first time, 4.5-star books are most likely one-time reads for me, albeit incredible one-time reads. They were just so enjoyable and impressionable and completely in line with what I'd want to take from books as a writer that I feel satisfied with having read them once, and encouraging others to read them at least once too, as they are absolutely essential in that respect.

5 stars. There are also two types of 5-star books. There's the kind that so completely bowled me over by the strength of their writing that I completely excused any possible weaknesses the book might have (usually in characterization). And then there's the kind that I read and reread and still love to death every time I do so. This latter category is further broken down into two types: books that are exemplars of their more lighthearted (usually contemporary realism) genre (e.g. Fat Cat by Robin Brande, The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale, Poison Study by Maria Snyder), and books that effectively combine readerly engagement with thought-provoking concepts (e.g. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, the upcoming Birthmarked by Caragh O'Brien).

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And there you have it! Did you learn something new? Dedicated readers of my blog, have you been able to see these trends and divisions in my reviews, and to take them into consideration when "using" my reviews? I look forward to next week's post about trends I've spotted in other bloggers I respect, when reviews do or don't influence me, and the deal with an excess of 5-star reviews... but in the meantime, I'd love to hear from you! If you want to write a similar post about your own rating styles, feel free to do so and link back to it here. If you have any comments or questions, mention them below, and I might be able to include them in next week's post.