Tag: book lover

Why I’m learning to write negative book reviews

Published on by Arabella3 Comments

Leaving negative reviews of books has become a tad of a controversial topic in the book community. There’s been a fair amount of discourse over if anyone really benefits from them and if it’s morally OK for people to be writing them in the first place. Once you’ve gotten past that debate you then come to the question of what is even classes as a negative review? Is three stars a negative review, but three and a half a positive one? Very quickly you can find yourself overwhelmed with a lot of people with a whole bunch of strong opinions.

In all my years of blogging I’ve never published a negative review on my blog (I class a review of under three stars to be negative). Goodreads yes, but here on Lost in the Story no. My reasoning behind it was why waste time reviewing a book I didn’t enjoy? Why spend all that time going through the book a second time making notes when I didn’t enjoy it? I also had the opinion that there was enough negativity in the world, and I didn’t want to be adding to that. All of that combined with the fact I tend to dnf books I don’t enjoy meant I never really had to face these problems.

However, I wouldn’t be writing this post if my thoughts on the matter hadn’t changed to some degree. Over the past few months, I’ve been doing some thinking and I want to break down for you why I’m now learning to write negative reviews of books.

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Pros and cons of re-reading books

Published on by Arabella7 Comments

Autumn is one of the best months for reading not because you can curl up with a blanket, but because the weather is so wet and miserable you can’t quite muster the motivation to go outside. I find I read more in these months than I do for the rest of the year. However, this means that the autumn months can get a tad expensive with all that extra book buying and that’s not ideal as a student. But this got me thinking, why don’t I just re-read some of my old books? It makes sense, after all my books only collect dust on my shelf and make me sneeze.

After flicking through some of my old books, and not really getting anywhere reading wise, I began to wonder if there were any downsides to reading my old books. I was obviously struggling to get through them, so something had to be wrong. This then lead me down the rabbit hole of the debate with re-reading books, where I think I got a decent enough understanding of it to apply it to my own reading and summaries it for you guys. I don’t think this debate is anywhere near as large as some others in the book community, but either way I hope you enjoy my break down of the pros and cons of re-reading books.

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Surrounded by idiots – book review

Published on by Arabella1 Comment

Feel like you’re constantly surrounded by idiots? Want to learn valuable behavioural skills that can help you navigate the world of work? Surrounded by idiots is an easy to understand tool that teaches you how to understand those who cannot be understood.

This 260+ paged, non-fiction read was written by Thomas Erikson, a Swedish behavioural specialist who’s been in the field for almost 20 years. The book explains to the reader the DISC method, created by William Moulton Marston a psychologist who published in his book Emotions of Normal people in 1928. The DISC method simply categorises people into one (most often two) of behavioural groups. These groups can be nicely distinguished by colours, you have your red people, yellow, green and blue. Once you understand these colour groups and the behaviours they show, you can start to understand those who cannot be understood.

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A familiar stranger book review

Published on by Arabella1 Comment

Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing A familiar stranger by Matthew Williams. I was given a copy of the book for the purpose of being reviewed by Matthew. I’m not getting paid to write about it, and the fact that I was given the copy of the book won’t impact my review of it, so don’t worry you’ll still be getting my honest thoughts.

The collection is based around the realities of living a modern day life. It covers topics from mental health to politics, big life events and day to day encounters. There is at least one poem in there for everyone.

The author isn’t afraid to play around with layout and stanza length to, it’s a contemporary collection. You’re not going to get bored with this collection, every poem has it’s own unique spin. It’s a credit to Matthew’s ability as a poet.

The layout of this collection is very well thought out, it add to the pleasantness of the reading experience. There’s four chapters within the collection, off of which could be their own collection as they stand if I’m honest. These chapters, living, loving, falling and rising, will then be the theme of the poems that follow. Continue reading “A familiar stranger book review” →