As a logical follow-up to last week's BEA and specifically BEA "Blogger" Conference with its heavy emphasis on how bloggers can serve publishers and Jennifer Weiner's "Sprinkling Fairy Dust" speech (as reported by various trusted bloggers whose links you can find in our last week's O&E), there is an understandable push back against the Review Only Positively message. AnimeJune over at Gossamer Obsessions argues very eloquently that book bloggers, contrary to what publishers believe, are critics, not promoters, a statement with which we wholeheartedly agree.
Gav Reads has some interesting thoughts on why reviewers don't want to read self-published books. We don't agree with every point made by the author of the post, for example, potential number of hits NEVER motivates our reading choices or blog posts. But we are generally skeptical about the quality of self-published books offered to us for a review, and especially when these books don't fit in any genre we enjoy reading.
We spoke briefly about "New Adult" fiction in our group review of Holier Than Thou a few days ago. This week Megan Burke wrote comprehensively about the topic, examining how "New Adult" fiction can be a well-needed category, but at the same time it can be just a marketing ploy to take advantage of existing "Young Adult" readers. Based on the various responses to this topic we've seen, it appears that it is mostly authors who write about college-age characters and face a lot of rejection from publishers who are unsure how to market such books, who campaign most vigorously for defining this new category. The readers' opinions towards this category are mixed.
The ladies at Some Day My Printz Will Come who report extensively on how the Printz committee works lamented that 2012 has much fewer quality YA fiction this year, at least so far. Sadly, we tend to agree. Genre and commercial fiction are printed in bulk, but Printz-worthy books are hard to come by this year. Do you feel like YA is getting worse in general? Or is it only us, The Readventurers, who are getting weary of teen lit?
Mainstream media is known not to do any research before writing about books, particularly if they write about 50 Shades, genre fiction or YA (you know, as "serious" publications, they only care about "serious" Booker and Pulitzer lit), but this week The Wall Street Journal published a surprisingly coherent and even informative article about the growing power of fan fiction, even though they did title it The Weird World of Fan Fiction.
Gav Reads has some interesting thoughts on why reviewers don't want to read self-published books. We don't agree with every point made by the author of the post, for example, potential number of hits NEVER motivates our reading choices or blog posts. But we are generally skeptical about the quality of self-published books offered to us for a review, and especially when these books don't fit in any genre we enjoy reading.
We spoke briefly about "New Adult" fiction in our group review of Holier Than Thou a few days ago. This week Megan Burke wrote comprehensively about the topic, examining how "New Adult" fiction can be a well-needed category, but at the same time it can be just a marketing ploy to take advantage of existing "Young Adult" readers. Based on the various responses to this topic we've seen, it appears that it is mostly authors who write about college-age characters and face a lot of rejection from publishers who are unsure how to market such books, who campaign most vigorously for defining this new category. The readers' opinions towards this category are mixed.
The ladies at Some Day My Printz Will Come who report extensively on how the Printz committee works lamented that 2012 has much fewer quality YA fiction this year, at least so far. Sadly, we tend to agree. Genre and commercial fiction are printed in bulk, but Printz-worthy books are hard to come by this year. Do you feel like YA is getting worse in general? Or is it only us, The Readventurers, who are getting weary of teen lit?
Mainstream media is known not to do any research before writing about books, particularly if they write about 50 Shades, genre fiction or YA (you know, as "serious" publications, they only care about "serious" Booker and Pulitzer lit), but this week The Wall Street Journal published a surprisingly coherent and even informative article about the growing power of fan fiction, even though they did title it The Weird World of Fan Fiction.
And speaking of weird, 50 Shades' influence over the world is endless, apparently. Now it is about to inspire publication of not only erotica and bondage fiction, but this sort of lit too - Fifty Shades of Louisa May: A Memoir of Transcendental Sex and Jane Eyre Laid Bare. WHY?!
To round things up and going with the theme of erotica and WTH, here are our last couple of "notable" links:
Try to guess if an erotic scene is written by a male of female author here. (Hint: "cave" is actually a giveaway)
And for your entertainment, some old skool WTH covers.
To round things up and going with the theme of erotica and WTH, here are our last couple of "notable" links:
Try to guess if an erotic scene is written by a male of female author here. (Hint: "cave" is actually a giveaway)
And for your entertainment, some old skool WTH covers.
