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conulyso I've moved some of my never-read-books from Eva's Study (aka "The Library" in nonpandemic times) to the bathroom.
This is working all right, though I once again am cursing the modern trend for longer middle grade and ya books, especially sf/fantasy. The most recent three I read were too long by a good hundred, hundred-twenty pages each. The stories were just too straight-forward to take over 300 pages to tell. They were padded. There's just no reason for straight-forward, plot-based books with no subplots or heavy-duty character development to take that long to resolve. I'm glad for longer books for this wide age range to exist, but not at the expense of shorter ones! If you feel the need to make your books thicker to appeal to parents and their wallets, consider adding pictures.
Also, the very most recent one, the author is just too obviously inspired by Nesbit and C. S. Lewis, and the end result is that her dialog sounds stiff and the narrator's voice sounds stilted. Apparently her publisher thought this was a good thing, and is called out in the endpages for saying the book reminded her of Nesbit and C. S. Lewis. (Also, I'm seriously questioning the idea that these parents sent six kids overseas to escape a fast-moving epidemic and none of them had to be quarantined at either end of the plane ride.) Well, it's her first book - maybe later ones develop their own voice.
This is working all right, though I once again am cursing the modern trend for longer middle grade and ya books, especially sf/fantasy. The most recent three I read were too long by a good hundred, hundred-twenty pages each. The stories were just too straight-forward to take over 300 pages to tell. They were padded. There's just no reason for straight-forward, plot-based books with no subplots or heavy-duty character development to take that long to resolve. I'm glad for longer books for this wide age range to exist, but not at the expense of shorter ones! If you feel the need to make your books thicker to appeal to parents and their wallets, consider adding pictures.
Also, the very most recent one, the author is just too obviously inspired by Nesbit and C. S. Lewis, and the end result is that her dialog sounds stiff and the narrator's voice sounds stilted. Apparently her publisher thought this was a good thing, and is called out in the endpages for saying the book reminded her of Nesbit and C. S. Lewis. (Also, I'm seriously questioning the idea that these parents sent six kids overseas to escape a fast-moving epidemic and none of them had to be quarantined at either end of the plane ride.) Well, it's her first book - maybe later ones develop their own voice.
