Thursday, June 25, 2015

A New Book Can Make All The Difference

Seriously, the best advice I can give anyone dealing with a reading slump is to ditch whatever they're reading and start something new. After talking to you guys about my disappointment with ACOTAR I packed it away with the rest of my books and dug out a new one that's out of my comfort zone.

Theres another good move to make when fighting a slump; pick something you wouldn't normally read.

I've really been loving Shelf Life Extention over on the BookTube and she's always talking about the Anita Blake series by Laurell K Hamilton. I found a super cheap copy on Amazon and figured I may as well give it a shot. It's an adult, urban fantasy series following an incredibly sassy and strong female protagonist. Anita Blake works on a special task force that deals with all things Supernatural in an America where vampires and other night terrors are out in the open. As an animator, Anita has a stronger resistance to the vampire's mind control, super human reflexes, and can raise zombies to help her on bad days.

I still feel like I'm in my slump, but now I think I'm heading in the right direction to escape. I read 70 pages last night, which on a good day is horrible but in a slump is amazing. I'll take what I can get, it's not the number of pages but what's on them that counts. (At least according to my overly optimistic mother.)



Wednesday, June 24, 2015

It's Not You, It's Me.

Guys. I have a confession to make. But before I make it, be warned that it will undoubtedly anger several people, even though opinions aren't really something to get upset over because everyone is entitled to theirs.

I couldn't get into a Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.

Now before you start throwing things, know that I think Sarah is brilliant. Her writing is beautiful and unique, her characters generally lovable, and her worlds are out of this one. It also doesn't help that I've been in a bit of a reading slump since I started the book. I crammed six books in the week before I started and burned myself out a bit. I also kind of got evicted a few days ago and had to pack everything and be out in three days. Between those two things I haven't even felt like listening to an audiobook. But I think it might be coming to an end and hopefully I'll be reading again before the night is through.

I'd also like to say that I will be picking this book back up in the future. I hate reading slumps. They happen to me every couple of months and generally ruin a good book with their timing. I have a really strong feeling that if I try this book again while I'm in a different head space, I'll love it as much as everybody else does.

There were a few things about the actual book that got under my skin though. What really surprises me is that my problems are with her characters. I'm used to loving the people she writes, so it threw me off guard to automatically hate several of them. I can't stand Feyre's family. It's hard for me to sympathize with her being taken to Tamlin's when her whole family is horrible. Even her nice sister is petty, pathetic, self centered, and spoiled. The father is useless. I wasn't even a fan of Feyre. I found her whiny, rude, and socially incompetent on a whole new level. She's bitter, melodramatic and angry about pretty much everything. I get that her situation isn't ideal, but she got herself into this mess, the least she can do is suck it up. Again, I feel like my abnormally strong negative feelings are heavily influenced by my reading (being grumpy) slump.