DISCUSSION | Hesitancy Posting Negative Reviews

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! I'm Genni, and today I'll be doing a discussion post about guilt over writing negative reviews. If you are unaware, I'm participating in a discussion challenge this year, hosted by Feed Your Fiction and It Starts at Midnight.

When I write reviews, I try to be as honest as possible and write about the good and the bad. But when a book is mostly bad for me, I always feel a little hesitant about posting the review. Today, I'm going through the reasons I am hesitant, and why I shouldn't be. 

So why do I feel a little bit guilty writing negative reviews? Well, there are a couple reasons. 

• I feel doubly disappointed when I don't like an ARC. Knowing that the publisher gave me a copy of a book after I requested it makes the not-liking it just a little bit worse. 
• I've had authors comment on my negative reviews of their book. This not only makes me feel very uncomfortable, but also reminds me that authors can read and might read these posts. I try to remind myself that authors are people separate from their work, and when I critique a book, it isn't critiquing the person. 
• Coming off too harsh. I don't know if my humor actually comes across when I'm slinging gifs left and right trying to explain my exasperation. But also, why am I so worried about coming across like a bitch when I'm just trying to express my opinion? 

While I am hesitant to post negative reviews, there are plenty of reasons to write them as well. Here's the couple that I came up with:

• Books are subjective! What one person loves, another person could hate. I think it's important that readers get every opinion, that way they can make an accurate decision on whether they think they'll enjoy the book or not.
• Every opinion should be respected! If I write a negative review on a popular book, I shouldn't be worried that people will be hurt or rude because our opinions don't match. This goes the same for publishers. If I'm writing a negative review on an ARC I received, I shouldn't be worried that the publisher won't approve me of other books. In fact, negative reviews of arcs show that I'm an accurate book reviewer and I don't let the way I received a book impact my thoughts.
• They're humorous! I actually like reading negative reviews more than positive reviews. Negative reviews have such intelligent quips and sass, and I'm here for them.
• We don't owe publishers or authors anything more than an honest review. Authors and publishers are looking for honest, in-depth reviews. My reviews, the negative and positive, are just that.

So for this year, I'm making a goal. If I don't like a book, I want to be as unflinchingly honest as I can. I don't want to beat the bush or minimize my faults; I want to give my negative opinions just as much merit as my positives. Let the negative reviews commence! 

Have you had any hesitancy about posting negative reviews? What do you like the most about negative reviews? 

Thanks so much for stopping by and I'll see you soon with another post!

Happy Reading!

Genni @ Ready, Set, Read!

DISCUSSION | Are Big Books Better?

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! I'm Genni, and today I'll be doing a discussion post. If you haven't seen my 2019 Challenge post, you might not be aware that I am participating in the discussion challenge hosted by Feed Your Fiction and It Starts at Midnight. For my first discussion post of the year, I wanted to try to get to the bottom of a  bookish question I've had for years: are big books better?

Of course, what is deemed "short" and "big" is objective. If you read only high fantasy, you might think a short book is 400 pages. However, that's pretty long if we're talking about a YA romance. For the purpose of this discussion post, I'm going to be sectioning off the books I read in 2018  into three different categories: small, medium, and large. Small books will be 250 pages and less, medium books between 250 and 399, and large books 400 and over.

In 2018, I read 111 books. Out of these 111, I did not rate 8, leaving 103 ratings for me to look at. Based on my scale above, I have read 22 small, 52 medium, and 29 large books in 2018. This isn't a huge surprise for me. I would say that most books fall in that 300 to 400 range. Since I had a pretty big shift in my reading in 2018, in which I started to read more YA contemporary and adult romance novels, these results make a lot of sense.

My 2019 Challenges!

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! I'm Genni, and today I'll be talking about the reading challenges I'm going to do this year! Now, I'm usually horrible with reading challenges and keeping up with them, so I'm only doing two outside of my goodreads challenge. 

Without further ado, here are the three reading challenges that I am participating in this year!

1) Romanceopoly

In 2018, I absolutely devoured romance novels. I really found my groove reading romance. I would say that I now read romance half the time and YA the other half, so my reading tastes are definitely evolving. To help explore this new genre I've really only dipped my toes in, I'm going to be participating in Romanceopoloy. The readathon is pretty complex, so I urge you to go check out their website, here, which will explain it better than I ever will. 

Essentially, this is a romance-focused monopoly challenge. I am going to be a wanderer, which means I won't go the direct route of the map, but roll dice that will take me where I want to go. I'm going to set my sights high and attempt the native level, which means I'll end up reading 39 books for this challenge. It sounds like a lot, but I do read around 100 books a year, and I probably read around 50 romance books a year. As long as I make sure I'm doing the readathon all year long, I won't have too much of an issue!