Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Have you ever thought of writing a respectful, but angry letter to an author to ask them WHY they killed off one of your favorite characters in a novel?

…no.  I don’t think I ever have!  I also don’t seem to run into this too often.  I don’t think I read that kind of a book typically (there’s a reason I have never picked up Game of Thrones).

No one dies in L. M. Montgomery books except angelic children who are too pure to live to be adults (it was a trope of the time…), elderly people who have lived a full life, and, of course, parents, who are usually ushered off before or at the beginning of the story.  No one dies in Edgar Rice Burroughs books except villains and inconvenient obstacles to the love story (though I was angry with him about Clayton, rival to Tarzan, come to think of it).  And the only person who dies in retellings of the Phantom is, sometimes, the Phantom and, well…so it goes.  That’s not my preferred ending, but it was Leroux’s ending so I can’t object too much.

The Harry Potter series provided a host of tragic deaths–the only one that really got to me was…oh dear.  The twin.  I say this is the death that bothered me, and yet I can never remember if it was Fred or George.  And that’s kind of the point, it was the breaking of the pair that made me sad.  That and the line about dying with the ghost of his last laugh on his face.  Sigh.  But I get it, you know?  Fighters and mentors and serious people can die and that’s just the norm, but when the funny guy dies, then it’s serious.  Serenity is a good movie example of that too.

A character death can be sad, and sometimes it can just be unrelentingly grim.  Kira-Kira, a Newbery medal winner where the heroine’s sister has a long, sad illness and then dies, was just exhausting.  But that’s the thing, I usually find books like that unpleasant or depressing, not rage-making.

I don’t know that I ever get angry with a writer about a character death.  Sometimes a character has to die.  I’ve written at least one book like that (not a published one).  I’d have trouble articulating why the hero had to die at the end of that one, but he really, really did.  So I get it, when an author kills a character, usually it’s a necessity.  Or it’s the whole focus of the book (again, Kira-Kira) which means I probably won’t like the book but, eh, tastes differ.

I get angry with writers about other things, and if I was ever going to write an angry letter it would more likely be about abusive relationships presented as romance (yeah, I’m still kind of mad at Meg Cabot).  But it probably won’t be for killing off a character!

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: How do you organize your books for review? Does it work for you or have you had to change it?

I used to be very organized about my reviews.  I had a print calendar I used to track all my posts because I liked being able to see it visually.  When I first started, I posted three times a week (at least) and usually wrote posts two weeks ahead, so I always had a buffer of posts already scheduled.  I used the calendar to keep track of posts made and scheduled, which helped me balance the focus of reviews and vary my non-review posts.

And…then life got busy!  At some point I got through that buffer and never caught it up again.  And I dropped down to two posts a week, though I’ve been successful maintaining those.  I don’t use the calendar anymore, I just know I post Monday and Friday.  I still schedule everything–I usually do the Friday post (like this one) during the week some time, and write a review for Monday each weekend.

I never did too much organizing of books in anticipation of reviews.  I do track my books read though, in a print notebook.  If I don’t have a book in mind to review, I’ll page through that to see if I read anything recently that sparks some thoughts.

Fellow bookbloggers, do you have an organizing system for your reviews, or is it more haphazard?  Has it evolved over the life of your blog?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Do you overextend yourself with too many reviews because you can’t pass up a book in hopes you will get them all done or do you carefully plan and be sure you can fulfill the deadlines for all the promised reviews?

I’m assuming this question is about promising reviews in exchange for a copy of a book–promising myself I’ll write a review is a whole different situation!  So I’m looking at it from the book/review exchange promise perspective…

I am a planner in all aspects of life, so I was never one to get overextended on promised reviews.  Lately, this is even more true…I haven’t actually accepted a book for review in a very long time.  I have kind of a lot going on right now (and I know I’m due for a goal update!) and I need my fun things to actually be fun and relaxing, not another obligation.  (I might feel differently by December, but right now I’m strongly feeling the ‘maybe a year of super low pressure reading challenges’ vibe for 2019.  We’ll see.)

Another reason I’ve pulled back on accepting review copies is that I didn’t always have much luck with them.  In fact, I had several experiences where I could tell by page two that a book wasn’t really for me, just on a writing-style level, but felt obligated to finish reading.  Because…someone sent me a book for free in exchange for a review, and reviewing that I read two pages and stopped didn’t really feel like holding up my end of the bargain!  Those books didn’t turn out to be terrible and I tried to give balanced reviews, but would I have kept reading if I didn’t feel I had to?  Nope, I don’t think so.

When I eventually get back to accepting review copies of books (because I do intend to eventually, when life settles down), I’ll probably request to see the first few pages before committing to reading and reviewing.  That seems like it would be better for everyone!

Fellow book bloggers, are you accepting books for review?  Do you feel on top of it, or do things pile up sometimes?