Topics of the YA Mafia

I came home from school today and opened Twitter to find a plethora of tweets about the YA mafia, a topic that both Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier had discussed on their blogs. I've spent most of this afternoon reading all the blog posts and comments about the YA mafia, as well as a bunch of related, older posts.

I have so much to say. There's so much here to discuss.

First, what is the YA mafia?

It's the idea of a tightly-knit group of YA authors who blurb, promote, and review each others' books who can also ruin your (possibly non-existent) career if you insult them or give them a bad review. It's a concern primarily for those who are both book bloggers/reviewers and aspiring authors.

It's also not real. But the issue is a bit more complex than that. There are a couple of facets at play here and some of them are legitimate concerns that I'd like to talk about.

1. The idea that there is a clique of YA authors who blurb and promote each other's books because they are friends.
2. Negative reviews harming the possible writing career of the reviewer.

CLIQUES IN YA

I may be in the minority of readers/aspiring authors here, but I don't care if YA authors are cliquey. Do I think they are? No. I think that authors who are, after all, colleagues, have every right to be friends with each other, read each others work, enjoy each others books and blurb and promote them. The idea that a blurb on a book cover should be accompanied by a disclaimer that the two authors are friends strikes me as ridiculous. 

Authors are allowed to be friends. As a reader, writer, aspiring author, I'm glad they're friends. Writing is lonely. Having somebody understand how difficult it is, sympathize, talk you off the ledge and discuss books in your genre with is great. If an author likes a friend's book better than another author's book, maybe they honestly think their friend's book is better. Everyone has a bias. Knowing the person behind the book often does help you appreciate the book more. That's not a bad thing. To me, there's nothing ethically wrong about authors sticking together and cheering each other on.

NEGATIVE REVIEWS ARE BAD FOR THE ASPIRING AUTHOR

I don't know if this is true, but I don't know it's not. Many authors that I hugely respect and admire, including Maureen Johnson and Justine Larbalestier, say that authors don't have the power to make sure that their agent or editor doesn't take on a blogger, even one that gave them a scathing review. But by the same token I've been told (me, personally) by agents that they won't take on a client whose publicly spoken against another client's book. I've also been told by an author that she'd be offended if her agent took on a blogger who hated her books. 

Whether or not reviews can harm your writing career, it is a legitimate worry. For some, there is an undercurrent of fear running through all of this. Though I gave up reviewing I second-guess nearly every. single. thing. that I say on this blog because of what happened last month during the #querychat and ensuing posts by Stacia Kane. It may be true that the only one who can ruin my (nonexistent) career is me, but it's equally true that there's a fear that I could ruin that career without even realizing it. That's the terrifying part. Not that there's a secret YA mafia out there, not that an author is going to be offended by something I say, but that somehow I'm doing something terribly and obviously wrong and there's no way to take it back. 

My personal opinion on this is that there's not actually anything wrong with aspiring authors reviewing books honestly and critically, but I have no power. And obviously as much as I see nothing wrong with it, I don't have the fortitude to stand by that and continue reviewing books myself. If I don't think I was doing anything wrong, why stop? Because honestly I have heard enough that makes me worry that I'm hurting myself and burning unbuilt bridges with those in the publishing world by reviewing. Not that there's a "blacklist" of publishing or a YA mafia, but that I would step on the wrong toes and hurt my relationships with authors who might someday be my colleagues. 

IN CONCLUSION...

I know I'm not the person to talk about this, but I wanted to toss my hat into the fray because this is an issue that's close to me and since I was mentioned in Larbalestier's post (in Phoebe North's comment), I wanted to give you my perspective on the surrounding issues. 

Stealing Time for Reading

I read very often. I read while eating, while online, between classes, and while watching television. Because apparently I think my mind can multitask like that.

But I hardly ever just read. Without doing something else, without paying attention to what time it is or what else I should be doing or anything else.

Last night though, I was so tired. I meant to come home and study and watch Friday Night Lights but I was too tired to even get my computer out of its case. I was like well, I'd have to plug it in. And then I'd have to go to Netflix. And I'd have to take all these books off my bed to have a place to put the computer... aw, forget it. So I just curled up among all those books on my bed and, because I was too tired to do anything else but didn't want to go to sleep (it was like eight o'clock) I started reading.

I don't know how long I read for. I know I got up eventually, took a shower, then came back and finished the book.

It was so much fun. I rarely take the time out to just focus on reading without having any other distractions and doing so reminded me of how great reading really is and how much I love it. So often I feel like I should be doing something else, usually schoolwork or my own writing. Honestly one of the reasons I loved reviewing books was because I felt that obligation to reading, like it was something else I had to do instead of feeling like it was taking away from other things.

Without that, I often feel like I'm "stealing time" to read (That said, I do steal a lot of time) and I'd like to get away from that viewpoint. I'd like to be able to devote even a little bit of time to reading without feeling like I should be focusing on something else instead.

What about you? Do you often feel like you should be doing something else with that time you spend reading? Do you tend to multitask read like I do or are you better at focusing on reading and nothing else? 

Tweets of Win, Edition 1

I maybe possibly overuse that little favorite star on Twitter, mostly because EVERYONE SAYS SUCH LOVELY AND HILARIOUS THINGS. Here are some of the best of the last couple weeks or so.

I am literally watching paint dry. As an experience, it is as advertised. -- @mssusieday (Susie Day)

two roads diverged in a wood, and i -- i took the one less traveled by, and that is exactly why i keep my iPhone on me at all times. #GPSFTW -- @taherehmafi (Tahereh Mafi)

Dear hot chocolate, thanks again! Please give my best to whipped cream. -- @birbigs (Mike Birbiglia)

Goodnight Everything. If you secretly stop existing while I sleep & only start again when I wake up, do not tell me. I'll only worry. -- @neilhimself (Neil Gaiman)

here's a question, blog

As you can maybe tell, I'm still working on the whole figuring out what this blog is going to be thing. With a book blog, it was easy: book reviews, discussions, lists, favorites. This time around, it's a bit more difficult. I want to talk about books but how much is too much? I want to talk writing, but don't want to talk about my querying process and don't especially feel qualified to give writing advice.

So I must turn to you, blog, and ask WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT? Or, erm, what do you want me to talk about?

a disclaimer of sorts

When I ran a book review blog one of the big reasons I didn't only review books I liked was because I wanted people to trust me. I didn't want to be fangirling all over books that didn't deserve it -- and I wanted to present a balanced view of even those books where all I really wanted to do was shout YES, THIS! THIS IS GOOD! BUY THIS! READ THIS!

I miss that. I miss the detailed, super-balanced reviews.
I miss it because I know, I know, the books I love aren't going to be the ones you love. Just because I think a book is super-fantastic-wonderful doesn't mean you will and there is a part of me that feels bad about essentially only presenting half of the story when it comes to books. Every book I feature on this blog will be one I love. One that I can wholeheartedly recommend, one that's good enough to reread, one that belongs on my Goodreads favorites shelf.

Now, when I tell you about a book, it's because I honestly love that book. It's worth reading. My recommendations will probably never be as in-depth as my reviews were, but they will still - of course - be honest. I'm telling you this because a lot of times when I see blogs where every review is glowing and they never mention the negatives of a book (because, let's face it, most books aren't perfect), I lose a little bit of trust in that reviewer.

But I'm not a reviewer anymore.
And I love the books that will be featured here.
And I hope you will too.

books are lovelytimes

(via weheartit.)

I love different books for different reasons. Some of them make me laugh; some make me cry. Some characters are like me and some are who I'd like to be, or who I'd like to be friends with, or who I never could be but can understand anyway. Sometimes it's the story and sometimes it's the characters and sometimes it's something else altogether - the setting, the voice, the themes explored. Sometimes what I love is the very idea of the book, the premise  that everything else was built upon.

Different books.
Different reasons.

I want to share with you the books I love but my reasons won't always be your reasons and my reasons won't always be the same. I know how to analyze a book, how to look at the different parts and write a review based on it. But I don't always know how to put in words the reasons why I love a certain book.

I'll work on it though. I'll work on telling you not how a book is, but what it is. What's great about it, what makes me want to read it again, what I love about it, why you should read it. Sometimes these reasons will be sweet, sometimes they'll be insane, sometimes they'll be none or all of the above.

<3