Ask Book Chic (8) + Contest

So I have no more questions after this edition so I need more questions and therefore I'm running a contest since that seems to work the best in generating responses. I will be giving away a prize pack containing these books to one lucky winner: White Cat by Holly Black, Forget You by Jennifer Echols, and Immortal Beloved by Cate Tiernan and maybe also a shot at something else on my shelves! The contest will be open until Monday, August 16 at 11:59pm EST. The questions can be about anything- I'm a total open book and also, I've been blogging for over three years, so I can impart some wisdom about blogging too. So please ask me anything!

Shalena asks "What book(s) started you liking YA?"

It would have to be Meg Cabot's books. Here's how the story goes: I saw the Princess Diaries movie and loved it, saw it was based on a book, and started reading that series, then moved on to other Meg books. I did skip the first PD book because I thought it was exactly like the movie so I didn't need to read it. Also, for some reason, I thought it was mostly prose and not diary entries, so I avoided it for a while. From there, the summer before my first year of college (2004), I joined Meg's forums/book club and started branching out and reading more YA based on her suggestions. Then eventually, I started picking YA books on my own. So I have Meg to thank for opening up the world of YA to me; otherwise, I'd probably still be reading only Terry Pratchett and VC Andrews, lol.


Just_Me37 asks "When you like a certain book from an author do you read all of their novels regardless of their plots? Or do you have to like the plot of a novel to read it, even it's from a favorite author?"

YES. Before I started reading more YA in 2004 (see story above), I seriously only read certain authors. If I read one book by one and loved it, I'd check out all the others. Luckily, all the ones I fell in love had TONS of books- Terry Pratchett, VC Andrews, and Meg Cabot. Both Terry and VC had been writing since the 80s, and Meg is very prolific.

I still do the same thing now; if I love your book, I'll keep reading you as new books come out. I just have tons of variety in between now that I've got the blog.

But the reason I keep reading these certain authors no matter what is because of their style, which usually is the same from book to book. If I like an author's style or way of writing, it shouldn't matter what the plot is. Because even if it's something I may not read much of, I'll still want to read it because I want to see how that author will handle that type of story with their style. Does that make sense?


Alexa asks "Why don't you have a rating system?"

The simple answer is that I'm too lazy to try and decide how to rate a book when reviewing it. Very rarely will I give a book a grade, though it has happened, mainly to kinda show how I felt about it if the review (to me, at least) seems confusing. But I got into this to tell people my thoughts about books. I feel like a rating system just doesn't get the full point across, at least if you just do a simple star or grade rating. I do really like how The Story Siren does hers as well as other blogs who divide up a book's parts and rate each aspect (plot, characters, writing style, etc.). But that's just too much work for me on top of actually writing a full review.

What I've been trying to do more of is, at the end of each review, I say "Overall..." and write my overall thoughts on the book so that if someone were in a rush they get the gist of my review in that sentence or two. But I hope that people are out there reading my full reviews and getting my opinion that way. A star rating can kind of take away from the written review.

Does that make sense? Anyone for star ratings on blogs? I think this could be a nice little discussion topic.