Molly Templeton

THEMAPPLES, one word, noun

I used to have to use star ratings on my movie reviews and I HATED IT and I STILL HATE IT and I also hate it when someone replies to a review with "So, did you like it or not?" Not the point! Not the goddamn point!!!!

I disagree that book reviews have to determine good or bad, though - some of the most interesting reviews are the middling ones, or the ones where the writer is wrestling with the book in some way. But I do think they're about a specific book (or two or three, maybe)

and it goes the other way too! some of the "highbrow" criticism is infuriatingly dense and navel-gazing, just in a different way (my good man I do not CARE how many things you can tell me you have also read, please, put some of those references BACK)

what this testy little reply means is: you can't control what people think when they hear either term, so you do you, and the haters can bite me. I just say I write about books. who needs a noun, anyway?

everyone has their own idea in their mind what those words mean, and some of those ideas are reeeeeeally not helpful, and it drives me up a goddamn wall when I find MYSELF stuck in those modes (i.e. ~criticism is smarter, iI just write silly little ~reviews, oh, brain, stuff it!). reject the binary!

thank you!!!!!

oh you NAILED IT

sorry i'll show myself out!!!!!!!!

Alt text: a Victorian stone building on fire. A glass-roof covering Central Station right behind the near-collapsed building.

sorry but you have someone else to blame for the headline!!!! (but I'm also sad, I want that)

IF ONLY I HAD THAT KIND OF POWERS

yessssssss god I miss her

really sorry to report that Buffy turns 30 next year. look, I didn't make the calendar, okay?

I have no idea what you're talking about LA LA LA LA LA

WELL IDK I would list some that others would def pick (Raven Scholar, Rakesfall, Spear Cuts Through Water) but the ones I think are less likely to otherwise come up include Age of Ash, Library of Broken Worlds, North Continent Ribbon, The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door...

Former PRH Exec Brendan Cahill Launches Navigator Books The industry veteran’s new Philadelphia-based publisher is focused on history, biography, memoir, and historical fiction. The company plans to publish three titles this year, starting in July, with pl...

just a heads up that this dude is a hardcore AI booster, do with that info what you will (avoid his company at all costs) www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

it's still rather embarrassing if satire, I think

sometimes you leave up a grumpy post because you stand by your opinion (which I do) and sometimes you delete a grumpy post because dishonest bullshit doesn't deserve any airtime whatsoever

is he, like, intentionally squandering whatever goodwill he's managed to amass orrrrrrrrrr

feeling very "who asked for this!?!?" about this whole thing (whatever it is)

also Ana Lily Amirpour's All Our Pretty Songs

Tarsem's Whatever-the-Fuck-He-Feels-Like-Adapting

if you haven't/hadn't read raven scholar i would definitely yell at you about it

haven't you read them all already!!!!!!

definitely, definition, typos, tomatoes, oops

christina this is rude as it depends entirely who I'm talking to!!!!

yes yes yes! my favorite kind of review

this is definitely something I was trying to work/think around, because I hate it (haaaaate it) when people posit that belonging to a genre is soley a matter of authorial intent (cory doctorow had a really grating definitely of SF that leaned hard in this direction) - it's so limiting!

and I hate that, I hate it so much; you maybe can't understand it exactly a text same way a person with [insert handful of reference points here] does, but that doesn't mean another way of understanding it isn't valid!

you know, I think I used to see it that way too, that the conversation was exclusionary–but something about the Chiang quote unlocked another way of looking at it for me. there are so many conversations to have, so many ways to talk about things!