Your Favourite Genre

As much as I enjoy any good book, I get this immense joy when I immerse myself in a high fantasy novel.

I'm nearly finished with Brandon Sanderson's Elantris and ever since I picked it up I haven't been able to put it down - that being said, it's taken me quite a while to read it because wooooorrrrkkkk :c I notice I always feel this way when I read a high (epic?) fantasy book with lots of magic - Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses (duh), Uprooted, any of Brandon Sanderson's books. I don't ever really feel as happy when I read a contemporary and I wondered why.

The thing with contemporaries for me is this - they deal with common problems set in my world. Yes this makes them relatable. But it also makes me feel exhausted emotionally because I deal with a lot of problems in everyday life and reading a contemporary is just like stepping out my door into real life. And a lot of the time I don't want to deal with real life (something personal about me: dealing with people actually really exhausts me which is why I basically never go out on weekends). I want to escape my problems but reading a contemporary usually makes me think about these.

This is also why post-apocalyptic/sci-fi doesn't always appeal to me too. Most settings resemble our world to some degree but it's a dystopia. These books remind me of all the ways the world can go wrong. It brings to light what humanity can become, how when stripped bare we are mainly selfish and self-preserving. Sure it also brings to light hope but we have enough disasters/issues in the world right now so I don't want to be reading about what else can go wrong.

That being said I do enjoy my share of contemporaries and post-apocalyptic - some of my favourite books are in these genres.

But then there's high fantasy...

High/epic fantasy is 100% my favourite genre without a doubt, Here is a wholly imagined world with no rules or boundaries. My problems seem small compared to the characters in these books. There's limitless possibilities and my favourite ones have complex magic systems which really make the world something I can barely fathom. I love that this world is born from someone's mind and the settings are intricate and lush. I won't know what will happen next so I'm kept guessing until the last page. (This also why I love Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts - magic and complex story lines in beautiful worlds.) When I escape into a high fantasy world, I become the character and I'm in that world and real life just fades away into something insignificant - I feel like I've become part of something epic? Wow that sounds weird. Anyway yes MAGIC. Funnily enough I don't like high fantasies that lack magic (shhh but I'm struggling to get through Game of Thrones and An Ember in the Ashes).

Do you have a particular genre? Any particular reason why?

Some of my favourite high fantasy:

• Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas - I love Sarah's lush writing in this and the magic becomes more and more intense as the books progress
• A Court of Thorns and Roses - Beauty and Beast retelling but with fey folklore
• Uprooted - the magic in this is lovely I don't know just read it
• Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson - metals magic system is so well thought out and complex THIS TRILOGY <3
• Fire and Thorns trilogy by Rae Carson - this one has amazing character development with very unique magic
• Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson - while one of the characters pissed me off too much to make me love this, the magic system is fabulous in this. It uses COLOUR. Love love love.
• Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo - this series went downhill for me but I still love it and the first book is wonderful. Very mysterious and I love the villain and the magic classes are cool
• Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers - assassins and serving Death and poisons yesyesyes
• Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge - another Beauty and the Beast retelling but with slight Greek influences and this one has magic and there's this really epic feel to it
• Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta - the first in her Lumatere Chronicles it's not extremely magic focused but there's a Tempest and prophecies and I love it. I still need to finish this trilogy off ahhh

Not all high fantasy but has amazing world building and fabulous paranormal/magic systems and settings to get lost in

• The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon - clairvoyants  like you've never read them before in a dystopian world. Phenomenal world building.
• The Iron Fey by Julie Kagawa - I adored the romance in this actually and I love the way Julie's written the Nevernever. 
• A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab - I could lope this in with high fantasy but this one is parallel worlds and one is based off 19th century England. Either way PARALLEL WORLDS that are SO well thought out and the magic to travel through these wow
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy by Laini Taylor - angels and demons but not as we know them. Laini's beautiful writing set against the backdrop of Prague. THIS SERIES UGH.
• The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh - a retelling of A Thousand and One Nights it's got curses and not so much magic but it's so angsty and beautifully written

Do You Change Book Ratings?

Hi guys, just checking in quickly here. I'm still alive! I've got some reviews coming up soon and my A Court of Thorns and Roses blog tour stop is happening week after next I'M SO EXCITED.

April has been an exceptionally slow reading month for me - it took me 3 weeks to read The Hero of Ages, the last book in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. Not because it was bad, on the contrary, solid 5/5 but because I just had too much going on. I'm only on my 3rd book for April (another Sanderson book) so maybe I'll squeeze in 1 more before month end... hopefully.

Anyway the real reason for this post is a question for you: do you change the rating you've initially given a book?

Are you the type of person that thinks, if that's what I gave it at the time I read the book, then that's the rating. And then you might re-rate after a re-read because giving a new rating could be biased without re-reading. Or for whatever reason. But basically you don't change the rating.

Or are you like me and go back and re-rate books after a while because I think back and go "actually... it really wasn't that great/bad". I do this since I'd have read more books since then, and have more to compare to. I don't re-read, so re-rating is based on what's stood out for me for that book and what I remember as time goes on.

I have a tendency for dropping ratings after a while. I've been known to drop a book from 5 stars to 3 and from 3 to 1 lol! And I've been doing this a lot more recently and wondering how many of you do it too.

Thoughts?

Discussion Post: Disconnect in the Book Blogging Community

Recently, I started booktubing as some of you may know. For those of you that don't know what booktubing is, it's like us blogging here on Blogger/WordPress but people talk about books through videos on YouTube. There's a whole community of them on there!

Long before I started book blogging, I also had tumblr - I've had one since 2009 and just started using it again. I mainly reblog stuff - fashion, food, landscapes and other elegant/pretty looking things. However, I also found out that there is a WHOLE OTHER book blogging community on there. These book blogs that post reviews just on tumblr, their hauls,  lists, fanart/edits and it's beautiful and wonderful. I recently just started following a lot of them.

What is the disconnect then you say?

Firstly, us Blogger/WordPress bloggers (which is apparently what we're referred to in the other communities) don't interact as much with these other 2 communities. I mean I interact with some booktubers but most have thousands upon thousands of subscribers and I just feel in awe when I watch their videos and I don't comment on their videos like I do blog posts. I basically have never even interacted with the book blogging community on tumblr until these past few weeks when I've dropped a few messages in their Asks.

Secondly, most of us Blogger/WP bloggers interact very closely with authors on Twitter - a lot of Booktubers do too. I'm not sure about the tumblr ones as I know authors use tumblr but tumblr works differently to Twitter. Where we can directly chat with authors on Twitter, tumblr uses 'Ask' functionality. But I still think it's mainly us Blogger/WP bloggers that interact the most (along with those Booktubers that also have a book blog on Blogger/WP). From what I've observed, Twitter is definitely the central hub of where authors hang out and where us fans can get the most recent and accurate news direct from the source.

Thirdly, and the biggest difference I found: tumblr book bloggers and Booktubers don't get as many review copies as us, if at all. The few Aussie ones I talked to on tumblr weren't even sure of how to request review copies - they didn't know that most of the time WE approached the publisher. They seem content with NetGalley, but some posted such lovely reviews I thought - well some of them should be getting review copies. One of my Booktuber friends also mentioned she has JUST been approached by 1 publisher. One. And she'd been booktubing for AGES before I even STARTED book blogging. I definitely have contacts with more than 1 publisher and I was approached as well 1 year after blogging. What this also means is that they miss out on bookish events. The few Aussie book bloggers in these other 2 communities I talked to had absolutely no idea about the various signings we've had in the past, the launches, the book blogging meetups, and things such as the National Book Bloggers Forum. I also wonder: do authors know that their lovely readers on tumblr do giveaways of their books? Because it happens often. Authors on Twitter RT links to our book blog giveaways, but what about Tumblr? Do they know there's a whole community on there who absolutely adore their work?

You might think, well maybe they're content with just NetGalley and reviewing books they buy. And don't get me wrong, that's great. But it also means they're missing out on a lot - especially with regards to events and hearing about book news. Most importantly though, they miss out on when the latest books come out and the opportunity to read and review these before they are released to spread the book love in their respective communities.

What do you guys think about this? Am I wrong? This is just what I've observed. Should we be doing something to bridge this gap? I know that PTA has a tumblr account which really helps those with Aussie book news related to Penguin Teen and a lot of the US pubs do too... But what about other Aussie book news?

Lucy over at Queen of Contemporary also recently addressed the disconnect between the book bloggers and booktubers. Read her post here: http://queenofcontemporary.com/2014/05/blogging-booktubing-announcement.html