Category: Discussions

The Classification Struggle | How Do You Decide Which Genre Wins Out?

Posted April 22, 2020 in Discussions / 7 Comments

Max and I moved into a new home last year and I was lucky enough to have a room built that is specifically for my library! It’s been a DREAM of mine, and I can’t wait to get it finished one day (COVID-19 has put a halt to my furniture shopping for the room for now). With a new library comes a more shelves, and for the first time ever I actually have an abundance of shelf space! While going through the unpacking process and actually being able to have shelves dedicated entirely to certain genres, I noticed that I […]

New Release Awareness | Discussion

Posted July 10, 2019 in Discussions / 7 Comments

I’m certainly not the first person in the YA book blogging world to lament the lack of attention many YA titles get when it comes to marketing and release hype, but it really stood out to me recently while reading an ARC I quite enjoyed. I picked up the ARC at ALA Midwinter this year on a total whim- I just saw it sitting in a stack on the publisher’s booth, but there was no signage or advertising for it and no one pitching it or even grabbing it. So I decided to pick it up because I liked the […]

Why Are 4 Star Ratings So Common? (For Me, at Least!)

Posted July 3, 2019 in Discussions / 10 Comments

After returning from my honeymoon, I had a lot of catching up to do in all of my bookish spreadsheets where I track my reading data. As I went through and entered about 2 months worth of reading history, I realized that I was rating SO many books 4 stars. Star ratings have always been a controversial topic in the book blogging world, with some bloggers forgoing them all together and others having completely different criteria for the numeric value they give a book. I decided to take a look at my prior year’s star rating history to see if […]

Thoughts on “Clean” Young Adult Literature

Posted March 20, 2019 in Discussions / 6 Comments

Over the course of the last few months, I’ve seen quite a bit of talk online about “clean” YA, and keeping YA safe for teens. Now, I know YA is primarily FOR teens but more adults are buying it and therefore the content is being skewed a bit more mature to cater to the adult readers (which is a whole different discussion) but I often take issue with what constitutes YA as “clean.” There seems to be an overwhelming aversion to any sort of physical intimacy or cursing but an alarmingly high tolerance for violence. I happened across a website […]

How Do You Decide Which Books to Buy?

Posted January 23, 2019 in Discussions, Features / 18 Comments

We’re at the beginning of a new year, and if you’re anything like me you’re going into 2019 with the best intentions of tracking all of the books you buy through bookish spreadsheets your planner, etc. I always start the year with the best intentions to track book purchases, however I always seem to lose steam around May or so because it can just become too overwhelming to track online purchases, in store purchases, gifts, pre-orders, etc. However, I have noticed that my book buying habits have changed quite a bit over the course of the past 5 years that […]

Staying Current with YA Series

Posted January 16, 2019 in Discussions / 10 Comments

One thing that is becoming increasingly obvious is that YA series are becoming longer. Whether it’s an originally planned trilogy that turns into seven book saga or a series that sets off a million spin offs, very rarely these days do we truly have to say goodbye to characters and stories we love. Which is a great thing! I’ve written about how I don’t understand all of the hate that authors get for expanding and playing in these universes they’ve created, but as a reader I do find it hard to keep up sometimes! In 2018 especially we saw the […]

Real Talk: A Case for Kindness

Posted May 30, 2018 in Discussions / 9 Comments

Real Talk is an original feature here at Girl in the Pages where I’ll discuss random things that come across my mind in an honest and sometimes spontaneous manner. It may be about books, blogging, life, or anything else! You know what I’m really and truly tired of? All of the negativity and author hate that I see happening when authors decide to continue writing multiple series in the same universe. I’ve seen everything from people claiming these additional installments are no better than fanfiction to the old “they’re just milking the cash cow argument.” While there are definitely series […]

Real Talk: Reading Guilt

Posted January 31, 2018 in Discussions / 13 Comments

Real Talk is an original feature here at Girl in the Pages where I’ll discuss random things that come across my mind in an honest and sometimes spontaneous manner. It may be about books, blogging, life, or anything else! The beginning of the year is always a wonderful time for readers and bloggers, because it’s full of new resolutions, reading challenge sign ups, and setting the ever-popular Goodreads goal. I myself always get caught up in the “new-year-new-me” flurry, and this year have set my Goodreads goal higher than ever before at 80 books (though I’m hoping to really make […]

How Do My Reading Habits Fluctuate By Month?

Posted January 12, 2018 in Discussions, Features / 19 Comments

I’ve been having a lot of fun looking back at my reading statistics at the end of 2017, and I’ve already analyzed some information such as Whose Books Am I Reading? and How I Used My Kindle the First Year. However, another piece of data I was interested in looking at was when during the year I was getting the most reading done. Was I reading about the same amount of books every month, or was I fluctuating depending on the month and/or season? I also have a blast making graphs, so this post was the perfect excuse to make […]

Whose Books Am I Reading? | A Discussion Inspired by Lauren @ Bookmark Lit

Posted December 30, 2017 in Discussions, Features / 8 Comments

This post has went through a bit of an evolution, as I’m making my own version of Lauren’s post that she in turn made after being inspired by a conversation that we had with each other about where we’re getting our books lately. Since I’ve read 80 books this year (more than I can ever remember reading), I wanted to dive a little deeper, as Lauren did, into where I am acquiring my books, especially as there are SO MANY new releases these days and there’s always the struggle of wanting to keep up vs. wanting to save money. When […]