I’m going to be spending a lot of time away from home, on the road, this month, with what my mom’s claiming to be “weekend getaways”. What she really means is we’ll be going on a college visiting spree. ? Anyways, back to the whole point of this post, what books do you bring with you one vacation? Do you even bring any books at all? Typically, I don’t bring any physical books. They’re heavy and take up space… and my mom doesn’t always approve […]

When I was a kid, my English teachers were always fond of promoting post-its. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sold more Post-It notes than Post-It note commercials. The point of post-its was to mark down anything I “didn’t understand” be it definitions, phrases, motivations, etc. and write down my findings after doing some research. For example, if I were to stumble upon the word “disruptive” and had no idea what it could possibly mean, I had to pause my reading, look it up, write […]

Last week, I went over why originality is dead, especially in YA. I talked about archetypes and how a truly original story can technically never exist. But our discussion doesn’t end there. There always has to be a “but” right? Like I said last week, thanks to tropes and motifs, I think the baseline, the foundation of stories can never really be original. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think books can’t be unique, that there’s no difference between Book A and Book B even […]

This is going to be a two-part discussion. Mainly because if I stuck everything in one post, it would be insanely long. Today, I’m going to go over why it originality appears to be dead. Next week, we’ll discuss if it actually is. Now back to the question. Is originality dead in YA? I don’t think originality is dead. How can something be dead if it never really existed anyways? You see, pretty much after Homer’s stories from way long ago, there are technically no […]

I’ve never been a big fan of hyped books. I just don’t believe in the marketing. Too many times have I been lied to and mislead. Do I feel a little left out when everyone is talking about a certain novel? Well, yeah. But sometimes being part of the crowd is not worth it to me. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with enjoying a book that has been hyped by what feels like the whole community. I’m not saying I’ve never enjoyed a […]