#BeCritical

Recently something happened on the internet that gave concern as to how people are rating books on Goodreads.com. That person was Bazpiere on Youtube. He noticed a reviewer on goodreads was mostly rating her books as 5 start ratings. This was crazy to him because if people are reading books they typically aren't reading all 5 start rating books. He thought something fishy was going on and just wanted to let the community know. He would like for people to truly think about the books they are reading and being more critical towards them, as well as when they write the reviews for the books.

I am not saying that this person is getting paid to rate the books as 5 star ratings but it is something that can be easily done. Honestly, until recently I would just give books a star rating without really writing a review at all for the book. I just assumed people aren't going to care about my review or what I thought about that book or so. I have now started being very critical and trying to write better reviews for my books. My reviews are not going to be anything like how Barry writes his reviews because he is very critical but I am using his reviews as a way to help me grasp how I want mine to be.

I am focusing on making myself aware of what I am reading and write how it made me feel. They way I decide if a books was good is based on the content of the story, the characters-and how much I could relate to them- and my overall feelings while reading. There are many times where the book was great but the author's writing isn't that great. As long as that didn't cause any problems for me to understand the story then I'd say it was a good book.

Each and every single person is unique so I would expect each and every review of books to be different. There are several things that people can catch in a book and it will be different from someone else who read the same book. Two people are going to get different themes, ideas and emotions from the same book. That is was is so amazing about us.

I agree with Barry that people should be more aware with the reviews they are writing but I think the way Barry brought it to people's attention could have been executed a little better.

[REVIEW] Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Synopsis:
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle—and people in general—has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence—creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

Divergent: Insurgent Teaser Trailer Reaction

I love Tris' hair in this. I know her hair is supposed to be short but technically it isn't that short in the book but I can get over that.

Why is her mother there? It looks like this is some kind of fearscape or when she drinks the candor juice or something. I am not entirely sure.

All Tris is doing in the trailer teaser is action stuff and I honestly don't remember this scene at all from the book.

The special effects don't make this scene seem real. If she and her mother actually did move around like that they should have be crushed by the two buildings crashing into one another.

I am excited about this film because I enjoyed the book but I am also a little worried at the same time. I hope the movie does the book some justice because a lot happens in it.

Mini Vacation

I went to the beach for about 4 days as I have with a bunch of friends for the past 3 years. This year was probably the best year thus far. We managed to have more friends join us, a bigger house, and stayed a day longer than normal. It was amazing. I took this vacation as a time to catch up on all my reading I need to do since I have so many books that are on my TBR shelf (over a hundred!!) and I want to have them all read as soon as I can. I have essentially been put on a book buying ban by my husband until I have read everything on our shelves right now. UGH this is so very hard. Honestly, how does he expect me to just read what is on my shelves?! Just kidding, I got every single book on my shelves because I want to read them. Anyways, back to vacation. I decided to be pretty ambitious with my books of choice for the vacation. I knew I wanted to bring all of these books but I was very well aware that I would not manage to read them all. 

I brought 8 books with me and I was able to cross off almost 4 books from my list. I think that is pretty great odds for how slow I can read books. I started the vacation about 60 pages into The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. I was not enjoying this book so it took me a while to get finished with it. I finished it Sunday morning and immediately picked up The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida because I wanted to know the inner voice of a 13-year old autistic kid. It was pretty interesting.  After finishing that in the evening I picked up Maus 1 by Spiegelman and I was engrossed so much into that story that I dream was visually like the graphic novel. It was pretty weird. Monday morning I had picked out the book The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett because I really want to dive into the Discworld series. I didn't manage to read anything until the afternoon. I managed 83 pages of that before we have to call it a night. Tuesday morning was clean up, so we had to pack up and leave our gorgeous vacation and head on back to the real world. 

I was able to read so much while on vacation because I was a little under the weather the entire time. I have a wisdom tooth pushing through, causing an ear ache and my husband gave me whatever he just got over so great times were had. Over all I enjoyed the vacation very much and I am so happy to call all that went with us good friends. I honestly can not wait to go again next year!