Fantasy books, terrible advice, and random silliness
I can never stop things accumulating beside my bed. Tubes of lip balm, hair ties, and half-read books have a habit of piling up.
Going through them is a geological exploration. The deeper you get, the longer ago the sediment (or book) was deposited.
It seems like time to clear out the book pile, and I thought I’d document what I found.
My first guest post has barged its way out into the world. Did I mention I’m stupidly excited?
If you want to learn how to analyse a person by snooping around their bookshelves, why don’t you stroll over to L.M. Durand’s blog and check it out? Or you could run.
Before you go, why not sign up to one of my email lists so you never miss a post.
Don’t get me wrong, kindles (or your e-reader of choice) are a wonderful invention. I love paying $3 for a book instead of $30 and getting it in 5 minutes rather than 5 weeks. Kindle books are also easy on my bookshelves, which groan under the wonders of culture.
But there is one area in which ebooks fall short and interfere with my reading experience: they almost never have easy-to-find blurbs.
I never used to understand people who wrote book reviews. You’ve already read the book, so writing a review isn’t going to help you decide whether to read it, and it’s an awful lot of effort.
But I’ve spent some time thinking about the matter, and I’ve concluded that there are five good reasons and two bad reasons to write a book review.
You have an opinion. In fact, you have many opinions. They’re all brilliant, and sharing them with the world will force everyone to acknowledge how brilliant you are. And, perhaps more importantly, how right you are.
I remember the days before Amazon, when finding a good book to read was easy. You’d go into the local bookshop, head straight to the fantasy shelf (or the shelf of your favourite genre), and run your fingers over all those beautiful spines.
You’d spot one with appealing colours, which was thick enough to be a good, solid read, and which had sequels sitting next to it in the shelf, so if you enjoyed it you’d instantly know what to read next.
It would have a title like “The Dragon’s Apprentice” or “The Warlord’s Dragon” so you knew it was about exciting things – like dragons. (No, I don’t know if either of those is a real book.)