Shut Up & Read discussion

OMG, I am at my wits end with the books these days. Where is creativity and originality. Am I the only one who wants to punch and kick Katniss. What an obnoxious EMO. Woman, you have kids now. I know people who were tortured in concentration camps who yes when they recall their times are sad and grieve, but they also have joy and happiness in their lives.

And why is it that I like all the secondary characters instead of the main characters. Why is EMO the new character choice?

That being said, the book i love the most that I just read because my little one had to read it for school was the Boy in the Pin Striped pajamas. Wow, what a book. I yelled, cried, screamed. Where are the fiction books that can elicit such a response.

Oh, and my take on Edward and Bella... so annoying. Personally, Jasper had a much cooler storyline and I would have loved to learn more about him. Stop with the EMO characters.

Or is it the generation today is just weak and EMO. Look at our older family members, how strong they were, what they lived through, and how they dealt with it. Such strength.

Sorry, had to rant a bit. If you have suggestions on good books let me know. Oh, even 50 shades got annoying. Well, the first book was good but the ones after just got really annoying.

I have to admit, I do agree with a lot of what you said. I thought Katniss was fine in the first book because she was resilient and just trying to survive but she irritated me after that. She had a chance to make the world a better place but could never look past her own little bubble. I have no problem with characters struggling or being emotional because all of that stuff is believable but when it takes up the focus of the book it bothers me. I try to write characters who see the bigger picture and get on with things even when it's tough. Ava, from my second book Nightingale is constantly scared of fighting demons. She throws up, cries and doesn't want to do it but she keeps it all to herself and gets on with her job because she knows it's the right thing to do. She doesn't whine that it's unfair. So many characters are just written to be really self-involved these days.

I get where you are coming from, and I agree. I am also sick of reading books where the main characters are clueless. I just read the White Trash Zombie series and I love that the main character is sort of bad ass and smart in a bad situation but she is clueless and a bit thickheaded and it just sort of kills a little bit of it for me. I think that is a little detrimental to her character and sometimes you want to reach in and strangle her.

My gripe is the badass guy who is seemingly everywhere, treats girls like crap, and gets away with it for no reason other than HES SO HOT!

Ya know what? That is NOT hot!

Interesting comments at least from an Author's perspective....Ladies, perhaps you'd like to meet Craig McNair

Read Blocked.

Agreed on Katniss towards the end. I thought she was fine in book 1, in fact I quite liked her, but by book 3 I was growing really tired of her.

It's part of the reason I have dropped a lot of YA books mid read recently. IT got to a point where the characters were either boring or rehashed versions of other characters I'd seen so many times before. Like Clockwork Angel -I know it's really popular but I couldn't finish it, I just got really bored halfway through.

The Vesuvius Club I love because the MC is so different and so funny. Have a look if you want something different.
I also loved Glotka in The Blade Itself (all the characters are pretty awesome actually, and well developed. Even the one that seems to be the typical good guy turns out to have a really surprising/unsavoury side). It's a nice take on more traditional fantasy.

Characters are a big part of what I read for (probably the biggest part), so I really cherish books where they're fleshed out, where their actions make sense, and where I come away from the book longing to spend more time around them. With the Hunger Games series, I felt like instead of getting more inside Katniss as the story progressed, I was getting more distant from her, that she was becoming less fleshed out. I understand there was PTSD stuff going on, but it made for an ultimately unsatisfying read, for me. Part of it was that she has less agency as the series goes on. She becomes more reactive than active, a point that's driven home at the very end when (view spoiler)[the love triangle is resolved by default rather than by her making an actual choice about who she wants to be with (if either of them!). (hide spoiler)].