The Nameless Book Blog: Let's Talk

Showing posts with label Let's Talk. Show all posts

Thursday, August 4

Let's Talk | Rating Books

Unknown August 04, 2016 1 Comments

Most of us have Goodreads account, and after we have finished reading yet another amazing novel and mark it as 'read', we are faced with the stuggle that is rating the book. Everybody has their own way of rating books and today I'm going to share my ways with you.

Question Of The Day:
How do you like to rate books?

1 And 2 Stars
This one is really simple: I don't rate books one or two stars. It may sound a bit stupid, but I feel like it's not fair to rate a book one or two stars. The author worked really hard on the book and it feels so horrible to rate a book one or two stars. There will always be people who will love the book and I don't want them to not read the book because of bad one or two star ratings.
And besides this, I've never really read a book I hated so much I felt the need to rate it so low.

3 Stars
I rate books three stars when I just didn't enjoy them much. Some examples of books I rated three stars are Red Queen, Allegiant, Passenger, I Was Here and The Fault In Our Stars. I did not like these books and kind regret that I ever even took the time to read them, but because I didn't absolutely HATE them, I still rate the books 3 stars.

4 Stars
This is what I rate most books I read. If I enjoy the book and the series but didn't think it was too special or anything or that it will stick with me for a long time, I'll choose 4 stars. Some books I rated 4 stars are The Raven Boys, The Hunger Games, Shatter Me and Me Before You.

4.5 Stars
Although you cannot pick this as a rating on Goodreads, I choose this one quite often as well. When I read a book, I always compare them to my favorites and see if I love it as much as I loved those books. If the answer is no, not as much, but still really liked it, I go for the 4.5 stars. This is what I did with Harry Potter. I really enjoyed them, but not as much as I enjoyed my absolute favorite novels, so I rated them 4.5 stars. Maybe it's a bad thing to compare books to others, but I do it anyway. It helps me to rate them properly.

5 Stars
Obviously, this is what I rate my absolute all time favorite books. This means anything written by Sarah J Maas and Cassandra Clare. How do I know a book is a favorite? When I think about the book for months after I've read it, sit on my bed rereading my favorite pars, wait months after months with a longing feeling for the next book and cry and laugh with the characters. Sometimes it's so bad, that if I finish the new book or the full series, I can't even sleep at night because I am so incredibly sad it's finished. That's how I know a book is a favorite.

Do I care about book ratings?
I do, it's really bad, actually. When I see a book that has gotten a lot of bad ratings and bad reviews, I immediately thing that I won't like the book. This is mostly the reason why I don't rate books one or two stars myself. I know other people their ratings and what booktubers and bloggers say about it shouldn't cloud my judgement so much, but it does and I hate myself for it.
I can also get really mad when I really love a book and someone else writes a really bad review about it and kicking it into the dirt. I can get so mad when I see that and again, I know I shouldn't let other people their ratings and reviews get to me, but they do. I guess I'm just very passionate when it comes to my favorite books haha.

So how do you rate books and do you agree with my system or do you completely disagree and rate in a very different way? Let me know in the comments.

~ Amber

Wednesday, February 24

Let's Talk | Adaptations

Unknown February 24, 2016 0 Comments

Book to movie/tv show adaptations, if they are done well, it's the greatest thing there is, but if they are done wrong, a lot of fans are pissed off. Today I'll give you my opinion on adaptations.

For me it really depens on the adaptation itself. I have seen some really great and some really bad adaptations. My favorite book to movie adaptation is definitely The Hunger Games by Suzanne
Collins. I read the Hunger Games books before the first movie had come out and at the time I hadn't seen any adaptations, so I didn't know what to expect.
When I saw the movie I was definitely not disappointed. The movies are so true to the movies and the cast was incredible. The characters look exactly the way I pictured them in the books. Besides this they are all amazing actors, which makes the movies even better.

Another adaptation I love is Game Of Thrones, based of the famous Song Of Ice And Fire series by George R R Martin. I have to be honest, I watched the tv show before I read the books, but I'm so glad I decided to pick the books up too, because they are so great. I usually love it when an adaptations is true to the books, which isn't really the case with Game Of Thrones. The first season was pretty true to the first book, but as the series furthers, it changes a lot from the books, which in this case I actually don't mind. I like (most) of the changes the show makers decided to make. I wish HBO would make every tv show adaptation because they do it so well: the actors, the costumes, the script, the CGI, everything is amazing.

It rarely happens that I like an adaptation more than the actual book, but there is one case in which I actually live the movie better. This is Lord Of The Rings by J R R Tolkien. I read the first LOTR book 'The Fellowship Of The Ring' a while ago and don't get me wrong, it's an AMAZING book, but there were parts that were soooo incredibly slow. That sometimes made the book a bit boring to me, even though the general story is fantastic. In the movie they left all these boring parts out, which, to me, made it better, or at least just as great.

I have also seen some pretty terrible book to screen adaptations. I think we can all agree on the Mortal Instruments movie: City Of Bones. Even though it was pretty true to the book, it wasn't great. The only thing I really liked was Jamie Campbell Bower playing Jace, because he's the most Jace person I've ever seen. I was so happy when we were getting another shot at something Mortal Instruments related to watch, but then I saw the first two episodes of Shadowhunters...If you've read my reviews you know I think it's getting better now that we're further into the series, but it's still not great...I do hope it will continue, though, because the show is enjoyable.

As you can tell I have some really mixed feelings about book to screen adaptations, sometimes they're great and sometimes they're horrible. It really depends on the actors, the writers, the producers, just everything...
I have to be honest though: I wouldn't want my book turned into a movie or a tv show, because the chance of it being horrible is just too big, so unless HBO or Lionsgate asks me to turn it into an adaptation and I can do the casting myself and script writing myself, I'll kindly turn down anyone's offer

~ Amber

Monday, February 22

Let's Talk | Not Having Read Harry Potter

Unknown February 22, 2016 0 Comments

Harry Potter: an incredibly famous YA Fantasy series that is loved by millions. I am a major fantasy lover myself and yet I have not read Harry Potter. In this blogpost I would like to discuss the things that are said to people who haven't read this series and share my personal opinion.

First let me explain why, as a fantasy lover, I have not read these books. As some of you might already know, I didn't start reading till about one and a half years ago. I never grew up reading the books and I didn't enjoy the movies that much. I started my life as a reader off with the amazing novel 'A Game Of Thrones' by George R R Martin, one of my all time favorite books. Since then I have read so many more amazing fantasy books, such as The Fellowship Of The Ring, the Throne Of Glass series and The Mortal Instruments. There are so many more great fantasy novels I want to read, and honestly, Harry Potter isn't on this list.

The Harry Potter fandom almost attacks you (literally) when you say you have not read these books and call you a 'fake reader' or 'not a real fantasy lover'. I know HP are great fantasy novels, but it's not the only amazing fantasy series out there, and honestly, the aggressiveness of the fandom is kinda turning me away from reading these books at all.
Why do you think someone who hasn't read HP is a fake reader or not a true fantasy lover? Are these books the only fantasy books out there? No, they are not. I simply chose never to read them and fall in love with other books instead. Does this make me less of a reader? No, it doesn't, because everybody should read the books they want and not be judged by the ones they choose to read. It was my decision never to read the Harry Potter books and I don't think I will any time soon. There are a lot of other books I want to read more than this series, and there's nothing wrong with that.

~ Amber

Monday, February 8

Let's Talk | Reading Books When They're Released

Unknown February 08, 2016 0 Comments

I read books when they are released pretty often, which for me is both a good and a bad thing. I recently got an ask on my tumblr about whether or not I like reading books when they are released. This made me want to write a blogpost about it.

So I love reading books when they are just released, especially when they are part of my fav series (see my most anticipated books of 2016 post). The only problem with reading books when they are released is that I tend to forget some important things that happen after the year that passed.

I have an example: I read Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard a year ago, right when it came out. Tomorrow (February the 9th) the second book Glass Sword is coming out and I pre-ordered a signed hardcover copy. The truth is: I forgot about 80% of what happened in the book. The only thing I remember are the major plot things that happened throughout the book. Now I have to reread Red Queen before I read the second book, because I want to have the full experience reading Glass Sword and not having to think back to Red Queen and try to remember what happened.

A good solution for this problem is waiting for the full series to be out. I read the Mortal Instruments series in December and I marathoned all the books. I could, because they are all out. It's a nice thing to do, but it's just not for me. Taking the Throne Of Glass books for an example, I would have never been able to wait for 6 years for all the books to come out.

Another reason why I'd never be able to wait so long for books to come out, is because of all the spoilers that go around on the internet. I manage to spoil myself for literally every book I read, because I suck and you know what is said: the internet is dark and full of spoilers.

What about you, do you like to read books when they are released, or do you prefer waiting till they are all out?

~ Amber

Wednesday, January 27

Let's Talk | Starting a Book Blindly

Unknown January 27, 2016 0 Comments

Okay, the title might not make any sense to you at all, but what I mean with starting a book blindly is that point where you just buy the book without any detail of what the story is about. All you know is what the summary on the book says. And you know what? It's probably the best way to pick up a book.

So, I found myself in the Bruna, a Dutch shop that has a small book section including English, and gazed at the three rows of books I could pick from. There were many books of my interest, even ones my friends would recommend yet I picked out a book I had never heard of before: The Finisher by David Baldacci. The first thing that appealed to me was the stunning cover, it called for mystery. The second thing that appealed to me was the fact that I haven't heard of it in my little book community. So I thought to myself why not?

So I personally find it easier to read very unknown books. Why? Because I have no expectation of it whatsoever. When people tend to talk about a book that was really good in their own opinion, I immediately get excited. Many of you may have had this experience yourself, but then it comes to the point of you actually purchasing the book and reading it. And then it is just NOT what you expected it to be. And let me tell you something (you probably already know, but) that fudging sucks!

Another reason on why starting a book blindly is so amazing, is that you can really leave it up to your own fantasy. You haven't seen the movies or the fan cast or the hundred-thousand pieces of fan art so the characters are from your imagination only!

However, a lot of people expect that you end up reading a lot more books you tend to dislike when you go into it blind. But the truth is, you will always end up reading books you don't exactly like from time to time. It's the same as trying a new food without any idea if you will love it or not.

Now my question for you, have you ever gone into a book blind?

~ Shania

Sunday, January 24

Let's Talk | Bad Fanfictions

Unknown January 24, 2016 0 Comments

Fanfictions. Every fangirl her secret pleasure. We love to read them as much as we love reading the precious books they are based on. Though to really enjoy a good sappy fanfiction, we need to get rid of the bad seeds.

BAD FANFICTION NUMER 1
You Got No Grams Fanfictions: The ones with a lot of grammar mistakes. One, can happen. Two, must be coincidence. But when there are a thousand grammar mistakes in a sentence of twelve letters, I'm starting to doubt the fact if I should really continue using my spellings check? Okay, I'm not a grammar nazi, I make a lot of grammar mistakes myself. But when a fanfiction is written like this:

"She walked 2 the bathrom to check on weather or not her boyfrend was alife or not"

BAD FANFICTION NUMBER 2
Netflix and Chill Fanfictions: The ones where the girl meets the boy and on the same day they sleep with each other and declare their undying love. WE NEED A LIL PUSH AND PULL. It's much more enjoyable when you let the characters dance, not in a literal way although it would be cute. What I mean is, it's cute when the characters bond over more than one thing. Grow closer throughout the story. Always remember, Rome wasn't build in a day and neither is a relationship.

BAD FANFICTION NUMBER 3
Taste The Rainbow Fanfictions: The ones where the created character is casted with different ethenicy from the canon character they are to be related too. It happens rarely, but it happens none the less. To me, it shows that the writer didn't put any effort into a background check. It's like giving Jace Wayland and African-American twin. It are just details your fanfiction depends on.

BAD FANFICTION NUMBER 4I Dont Actually Add Any Lines Fanfictions: The ones where the story line is completely the same as the book and there are no extra details added to alter the story. It's not fun to read something we have already read before, or seen before. So when you write a fanfiction, please don't just follow the book or show strictly. Let your character alter the plot a little make it fun!

My biggest tip to avoid writing a bad fanfiction: get a beta reader with an honest opinion! They don't bite, I swear. That was my opinion on Bad Fanfictions, please leave a comment if you would like us to do more with fanfiction. I myself write them too so I could give a few tips ;)

Now I got a question for you:
What bad fanfictions have you experienced?

Leave your answer in the comments!

~ Shania

Thursday, December 10

Let's Talk | Writing A Book

Unknown December 10, 2015 2 Comments

A year ago, my friend Shania and I decided to start writing a book. We chose to start this project, because we have always loved reading and felt the urge to write what we had never read before. During this process, I came across some things I felt that were really special to me, and I would like to share this with everyone. Of course, every author’s experience writing a book is different.

The Beginning

The idea we first came up with was completely different from the actual story we are writing. First, we wanted to write a book in the horror genre, our idea was to let the cast of characters we came up with experience terrible things. After writing the first four chapters, we realized that the idea we came up with was not very original and that we wouldn’t enjoy writing this. Another reason why we decided to change up the idea was that we felt really connected to our characters and didn’t want them to experience horrible fates.

Shania and I sat down and did some brainstorming. After hours of thinking, went back to the genre we both love the most: fantasy. This was when the story started to evolve rapidly. We kept coming up with good ideas for future events and soon the entire book and a set up. We were incredibly excited due to the fact that we had overcome the hurdle of creating a better story line. This made us so enthusiastic that we directly started to write everything down

Creating Aessolyn and its citizen

When we got to chapter 8, we came across another problem: the World. This would be the chapter our beloved characters finally got to the world we had been longing to write about. Soon we realized that we hadn’t spent much time on World building, so before continuing we had to develop our world further.

And so we sat down again and spent days on world building. We made a map to help us visualize it better and came up with cities and towns for our characters to travel to. We also dove further into the history of the great families of Aessolyn (our world) and events that happened to these families in the past that brought them to where they are now. Besides all of this, we also worked on the history of our world: why is the King like he is now and how did he get the powers he has?

It also seemed fun for us to throw in some special days for the citizen of Aessolyn to celebrate. This is when we developed the Elves and their traditions further. The biggest question we came across was: How do the Elves get their immortality? After some research, we still didn’t quite understand how exactly Elves aged, because they aren’t all babies, so they do age, but they are immortal. This raised a lot of questions for us so we decided to come up with our own idea: Elves earn immortality by doing something truly good, because they mean it. We came up with the story of Gaeadir and Luthriel, the first Elven King and Queen, who united the different races of Elves as one. Their beloved Queen was taken by a filthy mundane King and tortured to death. After the tragic of losing his mate, Gaeadir took his own life. His spirit now blesses every Elf who does something good and brave from the heart with the gift of immortality.

After finishing the Wold building and the creating of more characters, we could finally continue on with our story. More and more ideas were coming out of us and we started to make a set up for what we wanted to happen in the second book, because there is no way the entire story is going to fit in one novel.

The weirdest part

When we weren’t writing, I actually found myself wondering what was going to happen next in the book and wanted to continue reading. This was the weirdest part for me, because Shania and I were the ones actually deciding what was going to happen next. This was when I realized, that even though we made a big setup for the book, the smaller details and events in the stories were actually not decided by us, the writers, but by the characters in the book. This is their story, we only write it down. I don’t even know if this makes sense, but this is the way I experienced it.

It’s very strange that you create a cast of characters that, for you, actually come to life. We don’t think about what we want to happen next, we write down what our characters would do. It’s bizarre that we know these fictional characters so well that we know the decisions they would make with all their different personalities, without needing us to decide what happens next. To me, this is the most beautiful part about writing.

The Writing Block

We recently came across something every author experiences: A writing block. Currently, we are in the middle of a massive battle between the Dark Elves and the Humans that we have been working towards for a while and we have no idea how to wrap it up. Because of this, I noticed that we started writing less every day and when we had time to write in class or at home, we were doing anything but write. I think the best thing to do in this case is just leave your story alone for a while, you will eventually find yourself wanting to write again.

During this break from writing I came up with an idea I really liked for a different book and shared this with Shania. She was just as excited as I was and we started the setup for the story. Since we learned a lot from the process of writing The Nameless, we immediately started with creating a well structured cast of characters and did the World building before we actually started the story. This book is still in very early stage and we only wrote the Prologue so far, but we are just as excited about this book as we were about The Nameless.
Update: We have BEAT our writing block and are back to writing every day again! :)

While we were working on the setup of this new book, we also started to get new ideas for our first book and this is how we beat our writing block. I don’t know how many and what kind of problems we are going to face in the future, but the most important part I learned about this whole experience: Never give up on your story.

Editing and the final chapters
Our story is now 108.000 words long and we are about to write the final chapters, the epic finale of this first novel. It's so strange to me, finishing this project we have been working on for almost a year now. I have grown so fond of the characters we created and all I want is for the world to experience their journey. We have already made a set up for the second book, since there is no way we can fit the tale we want to tell the world into one novel.
Besides the writing, editing is also a huge part of an authors work. I have spend the past week editing what we have written so far and already added about 5000 words to the story. You come past so many stupid mistakes or bad grammar when rereading your first draft and sometimes I find myself thinking: did we really write this shit? Luckily editing only makes it better, even though it's a lot of work and a huge pain in the ass.

When we finish the first novel and the editing, we're off finding a literary agent and a publisher who wants to give us the opportunity sharing our work with all the readers out there. It's everything I've ever dreamt of.

Check the book here! :)
Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/41792207-the-nameless
Fiction Press: https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3265164/1/The-Nameless

~ Amber

Thursday, November 26

Let's Talk | Slow Reading

Unknown November 26, 2015 5 Comments

There are numbers of research studies that tell us that kids who tend to read slower than other people have a lack of fluency, meaning they could just have Dyslexia. But guess what? I love being a slow reader, I will never be a fast reader and here are some reasons why.

I have probably been a slow reader my whole life, that however, doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading as much as fast readers do. It just means that I take a much longer time to finish a book. While for me that is no problem at all. I can read quick but when I do so, I forget half of the stuff I've read. So when I look at my TBR list, it will only get bigger and bigger with every trip I take into the city. And you know what? It doesn't bother me one single bit.

First of all, If a book is enjoyable why hurry through it? As a slow reader I take my time to read the book in peace. It does mean that I'm pretty incapable of reading more than 40 pages in one hour and maybe even less, after that I need to take a small break, but that break helps me with processing the information I just received. So, you could say that reading slower helps me remember the content of the book better. That break might also be because someone decided to distract me again. Person with very low attention spawn here...

You won't see me doing a lot of reviews however, and I'm terribly sorry for that because I do like sharing my thoughts on a book that I really really loved, but it takes me more time to finish a book than it does with Amber. Amber even told me that she is a slow reader as well, and I believe her, that would just make me a super slow reader hehehe.

Reading slower doesn't change my book experience. You'd say that fast readers get so caught up in the story that they rip through the whole book in just a few hours and that slow readers don't. I personally believe that we actually experience more of the book but when I read, the world around me slowly changes. I see everything that happens in the book, I find myself going along on adventures and when I look up from my book find out that so much time has passed and that I didn't even realise when it was getting dark inside.

I came across a lot of articles showing tips on how to improve your speed while reading, but you shouldn't want that. Slow reader or not, you should always stick to your on pase, never let anyone tell you to do other wise. Reading is for fun and when we need to do something, it's no longer something we do with our hard.

So, my question to you, Are you a slow reader? If yes, why do you like/hate it?

~ Shania

Thursday, November 12

Let's Talk | The Goodreads Reading Challenge

Unknown November 12, 2015 2 Comments

This was the first year I participated in the Goodreads Reading Challenge and I recently reached my goal of 25 books (which for me is quite a lot). During the whole process of trying to reach that goal, I found out that I have some issues with the whole challenge. I would like to share those issues and find out if anyone feels the same way as I do.

Let me start off my saying that I really like the idea of the Goodreads Challenge and that (for me) it's the perfect way to keep track of all the books I have read in a year. This is also the reason why I will still be setting a new reading goal next year as well. Despite the problems I came across, it was a lot of fun to work toward that goal and finally reaching it felt like such an achievement.

Next year I will be setting a really low reading goal of about 10 books, though, and I have a few reasons why.

The biggest reason why I made this decision, is the stress the reading challenge gave me this year. I am a student, which means that I am at school during weekdays and work in the evenings and on the weekends. That doesn't leave me much time to read. At certain points I had to push myself to read JUST because I wanted to reach my reading goal. I think this isn't okay.

I also like to read big fantasy novels, which are usually really long. This April, I read A Clash Of Kings by George R R Martin, an amazing novel with the great amount of 1009 pages. I highly enjoyed the book, but even though I loved it so much, I noticed that I was rushing through it, because I didn't have a long time to read a certain book (only about one and a half week), because of my reading challenge.

This is why I decided to set a low reading goal for next year. I will still be able to keep track of how many books I read in a year, but I won't have to rush or push through books. Reading should be fun and not stressful.

My Goodreads

~ Amber

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