A Day in Bookland

The world went crazy when a new Harry Potter adventure was announced, myself included. When I learnt it was gonna be a play, I felt a little bit disappointed because not everybody could afford to go to London to watch it but still felt some hope when they said the script was gonna be released because at least I would be able to read the story, right? Now that I’ve read it, I wish I hadn’t. Harsh, I know, but I’m insanely disappointed in this new adventure. Why? It makes no sense. I wanted to write a review without spoiling but it seems impossible when there are so many issues to talk about and not revealing certain aspects of the plot would be impossible. So, there will be spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned. This discussion might be all over the place: I have so much to talk about but I don’t want this to be very long, which will probably be. Apologies in advance for both the length and my being all over the place.

I ask you today, are we ready for a book or it’s a book ready for us? It may seem like a stupid thing to ask but think about it. The same book, the same words, the same reader and yet, sometimes, a different outcome depending on the moment the book was read. The way I see it, both the readers and the book hold the power. There is a balance between them. A book has the power to bewitch us but for that to happen, it needs to fall into our laps at the right moment in time.

When you have a mahoosive TBR just like mine – although I know I will always be reading which means my TBR will never cease to exist  – sometimes deciding what to pick up next can be quite a task.

For a while I have kept reading blog posts or watching videos regarding rating systems and why it brings pressure onto our reviews and I thought about throwing in my two cents and talk you through my decision of not using a rating system anymore here on my blog. I will still use it on Goodreads but I don’t post fully reviews on there so there’s that. Rating is useful; that much is true. It gives us base to organize our thoughts around a number. However, I found the main problem to be that ratings are a personal thing. Stars or whatever form you use, concerning the reader who is giving them, can mean differently. 3 stars for instance, are rather controversial. According to Goodreads – and me – it means you liked the book. However, there are loads of people out there who wouldn’t read a book with a 3 star rating.

A few days ago, Cait @ PaperFury tweeted about a problem regarding one of her reviews. She was getting a lot of nasty comments due to her one-star review of Finding Aubrey because people seemed to think she was mocking the book when in truth, she explained that the reason behind her rating was that she thought the book was mocking social anxiety. I cannot say a thing about the book because I haven’t read it nor I plan to do it but what bugged me the most was how closed-minded people can be. I’ve never got a nasty comment on any of my reviews but it’s not the first time I see this type of behaviour.

Okay, peeps, today I wanna talk about two things that have been bugging me since almost the beginning of the year. Those are my reading tastes and my rating patterns . I wanna start with the latter first because it is what made me realize about the former.

There is something exhilarating yet terrifying about finishing a book series . We want to know how the story will end; but don’t fool yourselves, in reality what we really wanna see is if the story ends as we thought it would – in other words, as we want it to end. Unfortunately, most of the time, it doesn’t and although that doesn’t imply you won’t like it, it also means uncertainty and let’s face it, nobody fancies that feeling.

This discussion post is probably going to be a bit all over the place so I apologise for that. I initially thought about not posting this but then again, I wanted to. If the entire post makes no sense, blame my brain. He’s being annoying because of exams and the whole studying thingy and I honestly wrote this today after finishing my classes like two hours ago (it was 10 pm in case you were wondering)... Alfie Allen feels me...

That’s it. I’ve just broken my own personal record: more than a week without reading a single word and I’m quite anxious here because I don’t feel like trying to do something to stop this nonsense. Yep guys, we can start panicking right this second!