Reviews

Negative Reviews That Don’t Turn Me Off a Book

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 18 Comments

More often than not, it’s the gushing, positive things in reviews that help convince me to read a book, and the negative ones that make me steer clear. However, as I’m sure is the case for many other readers, sometimes criticisms in a negative review won’t actually turn me off… in fact, they’ll make me think the book might be up my alley. This is of course mostly due to personal taste, for example if the reviewer mentions something they dislike that I don’t, and more rarely, due to things that make me suspicious as to the reviewer’s motives. Continue reading →

Amazing Concept, Disappointing Film: ‘Upside Down’ Could Have Been Great

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 3 Comments
Upside Down, Released 2012. Image from Japan Times

I don’t normally write movie reviews… in fact, I don’t even really write book reviews, I just occasionally mention or rate books I like. But this week I had to make an exception, because I recently watched a film on Netflix that irked me, not because it was terrible (though I did find many aspects of it to be terrible) but because it could have been so good. It could have made it onto my favourite sci-fi films of all time list. Continue reading →

How a Book Gets My Attention

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 10 Comments
Photo by Nicola Alter (CC BY SA 4.0)

I’ve always been fascinated by how books are discovered – by how a person ends up finding and deciding to read a particular novel amidst the ever-growing sea of books swirling around them. Since starting to write myself I’ve become even more fascinated by this process, knowing I may one day have a book out there that I hope to get into readers’ hands.

Sadly I don’t have the expertise or the data to analyse how most people find the books they read. However, I do know my own habits and behaviours as a reader, so for interest’s sake I thought I’d take a look at how a book can stand out from the crowd for me and make it onto my “to-read” shelf. Continue reading →

Loved It, Hated It: A Wizard of Earthsea, Angelfall and The Knife of Never Letting Go

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 5 Comments
Photo by Eyesplash (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Sometimes when I’ve absolutely adored a book and given it 5 stars, I do something a little counterintuitive. I go to Goodreads and I scroll down till I find a one star review and read it. Why? Because it has always fascinated me how much people’s taste in books can differ. I wonder how a book I thought was amazing has inspired someone else to launch into an angry rant, or vice versa. Continue reading →

Why You Should Join Goodreads

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 2 Comments
Home page of the social media site Goodreads

Okay, so I’ll get it out there first off: I love Goodreads. I am a Goodreads fangirl. Excepting perhaps Facebook, Goodreads is my favourite social media network. Like so many book-related things these days, it is owned by Amazon (sigh)… but I overlook that because it has instigated such a positive change in my reading life and behaviour.

If you’ve never tried it, and one (or all) of the below statements applies to you, there’s a good chance you’d enjoy using it too: Continue reading →

Fantasy Authors Read 1-Star Reviews

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 4 Comments

I stumbled across this series of videos the other day: a whole host of famous fantasy and sci-fi authors (including Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, John Scalzi, Laini Taylor, Jacqueline Carey, Elizabeth Bear and more) reading scathing 1-star Amazon reviews for their books aloud. It’s pretty funny. My favourite is the third video. Continue reading →