Monday, May 18, 2009

Random Musings

Okay, so you might have noticed a few changes around here at Becky's Book Reviews. Probably subtle changes. I won't subtract points if you can't find them all or anything. But I wanted to clean up the sidebars a little without actually getting rid of anything. Let me know if the scrolling helps the load time any. I'm hoping it will. I notice it is faster on my end. But it's your end that matters. Let me know if I need to keep at it.

I got a request via email asking me to clearly label my posts so that folks can match them with the right age group. While I had been doing this in the 'labels' or 'tags' section of the post (the bottom of each post), I have decided that I should make a note in the title itself. That way you know what you're getting right from the get go. MG will be for Middle Grade. YA for Young Adult. I haven't decided if 'A' will be for Adult (since people might think it's a grade/rating) or if I'll just leave that off. Also, since 'adult' can be considered to have two meanings--depending on whether you're in the gutter or not. I don't want there to be any confusion since I don't mean adult adult.

I will keep using labels as well. I'm not always consistent in application though. You would think I could always remember to be both general and specific. (Every YA book being labeled "YA Fiction" regardless of genre.) So using the tag "YA Fiction" (notice on the right sidebar) won't bring you every book ever reviewed. So you might have to try "YA Fantasy" or "YA Historical Fiction" etc. to get every one. If you're looking to see if I've reviewed a specific title or a specific author, your best bet might be to try a search. And I encourage you to use the archives as well. Browsing can be fun. And I hope it would yield some unexpected surprises to add to your TBR pile.

I have a little bit of mixed feelings on labeling in general. In that some books can be equally enjoyed by a sixth grader, a tenth grader, and an adult. After all, it isn't about ability so much as interest and appeal. And a few folks feel shy about reading 'below' their supposed age range. As if reading a book labeled Middle Grade or Juvenile makes them look dumb. So I haven't decided if I'll cross-label (MG, YA) or (YA/Adult) or what. What do you think?


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks a lot becky. i appreciate it and i am sure a lot of other people will too. you could us hs=high school or teen for teenager for young adult??????????

Anonymous said...

I understand your concern about using A for adult, but I really appreciate the scrolling. Your blog loads SO much faster now.

Anonymous said...

I really does load a whole lot faster! Thanks!

Nikki in Niagara said...

Well, I can tell you what I just started to do recently since I review a lot of children/YA books plus also a lot of adult books which are not suitable for children at all and I didn't want to drive away the children/librarian/homeschool readers (plus my 10 yo niece reads my blog) I started putting a *minimum* age suitability right near the beginning of my review. I don't really ever put a limit age unless I really feel it's called for. So I just say 8+, 10+, 14+ and for adult books 18+ and if I ever come across an *adult* adult book I may have to put 40+ (but even I'm not old enough to read this!)

Kristi said...

Okay, I had to laugh at the *adult* adult book comment, but I know what you mean. I really do like the new YA and MG in the title though. While I occasionally read YA, I don't have much call for reading MG (unless its a Newbery Award winner or something). Oh, and everything is loading much faster and I've had no problems with it (I'm using Safari, if that helps). Thanks for all the reviews!