Category: Reading and Book Reviews

Commentary on reading and books.

Creative resolutions to your standard love triangle

Tired of one girl being torn between two young men in your typical YA love triangle? The love triangle might not be going anywhere, but it can certainly be resolved more creatively. Here are some suggestions.

A popular YA trope that is commonly voted “trope that most needs to die” is the love triangle.

The standard love triangle involves a young woman choosing between two young men, both of whom are yummy and interested in her, and both of whom she gets warm squishies over.

Yes, the typical love triangle is all about female indecisiveness.

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PG thoughts on the mystery of 50 Shades of Grey

I can learn something from reading any bestseller, even Fifty Shades of Grey. 

As part of my quest to read mega-bestsellers, I recently read Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. This post is my attempt to share my thoughts on it.

I’m not reviewing the book, and I’m not going to attack or defend the things portrayed in it. But, like it or hate it, it is humongously successful, and my purpose is to see what I can learn from it.

The first thing I asked myself when I decided to talk about this book is how much I can say on a PG blog. Can I say the word “sex”?

Hey, I just did. I guess that’s a yes.

What about “kinky sex”? Looks like I can say that too. But that’s as far as I’m going to go.

Now that I’ve figured out the rules, shall we make a start?

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Sebastian and Rain read three books and kind of like them

Sebastian and Rain won’t let me write an introduction. They insist on getting straight into talking about the books they read.

Rain: You talked so much last time, this time I should get to start.

Sebastian peels a grape and slips it into his mouth.

Rain: We read Divergent by Veronica Roth. Did you know that right now it has 44,555 reviews on Amazon? That’s so freaking many!

Sebastian: And I’m not really sure why. The whole book was rather silly and juvenile.

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Sebastian and Rain read more mega-popular books

My writer half and my reader half ganged up and read Maze Runner recently. The verdict was… less than rosy.

Over the past few days Sebastian and Rain read Divergent and Maze Runner. There were good reasons, I promise.

If you haven’t met Sebastian and Rain before, you can read this post. It probably won’t clear anything up.

Sebastian: I have to talk about The Maze Runner first. You made me stay up late last night finishing it, so I should darn well get to explain why I hated it so much.

Rain: Like anyone could stop you.

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Shaking a book funk with mega-popular books

To shake a reading funk, I’ve decided to read a string of mega-popular books. The Hate U Give was the first. This is not a review.

I’ve been in a reading funk recently, maybe because I’ve been running full tilt (metaphorically speaking) and I’m still falling over. The result is I’ve been having trouble getting emotionally engaged in books.

Is it me? Is it the books? Only the Great Cat knows.

To shake things up, I’ve decided to try something I rarely do: seek out and read mega-popular books. And by mega-popular I mean more than 10k reviews on Amazon, or books that “everyone” is talking about.

I feel bad because these authors probably don’t need my support and so many wonderful books are undiscovered, but I’m tired from doing the discovering myself.

I’ll return to undiscovered books shortly. Right now I need a break.

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