Retaliation reviews

An Introduction:

I’m A. Lynn Powers, but feel free to call me Amy. It’s no secret what the A stands for. Besides “awesome”... haha, I kid. Sort of.

I’m the author of the Being Medusa series, in addition to several other stand-alone YA novels. You can find me lurking around OnlineBookClub.org where I do a lot of official book reviews and occasionally some official author interviews. So, yes, I am a writer, but I am also a reader. In fact, despite having written more than 20 books over the course of my life (with only a fraction of those actually published... trust me! It’s better this way! Some of those books are just embarrassing!), I still consider myself a “reader” first and a “writer” second.

I do a lot of reading. Let me emphasize that. A lot. I’m not the fastest reader in the world, and I won’t admit to being able to pick up anything and enjoy it, but given the amount of time I spend doing other things (I’m a full-time teacher in a Japanese preschool system, teaching English as a foreign language to students ages 1 to 6, and my job requires a lot of travel, paperwork, and meetings), I even amaze myself at how much reading I can get done.

And I LOVE reading. My previous job left me with ZERO free time, and I couldn’t do any reading, but my current job is amazing. While I am traveling around on Tokyo’s subway/train system, I usually manage an average of an hour a day with my books. Last year I read 124 books. The year before (when I started my job in April), I think I read about 75.

Around that time, I started using Goodreads to keep up with the books I had read, after I started reading a new book only to discover that I had already read it before! Hahah! We’ve all done that, right?


A Goal:

This year, my goal is to not only keep up with the books I read, but to leave a rating and write a short review about each one. Mostly I just want to remind myself about the book and what I liked or didn’t like about it. Last year I left a rating for each book, but I didn’t write a review. This might have been a mistake. Maybe? Perhaps if I had left a quick sentence or two, I wouldn’t have received what I like to call “retaliation ratings.”

Do you know what I am talking about? When you leave a rating for a book, and then the author in return leaves the same (or worse!) rating for one of your books? Only you know in your heart that this person didn’t actually read your book, and the rating is merely retaliation against you and not an accurate reflection of their opinion – given that they shouldn’t have an opinion whatsoever, not having read the book and all.


A Rant:

I guess this is the rant that I want to make now. Why would an author degrade himself/herself like that? “You didn’t like my book? Well, fine, I’m just going to say that I didn’t like your book, either.” Two stars. What, seriously? Not only is that completely disrespectful, but it’s also petty and childish. If you were a REAL author, you would respect the opinion of another author who took the time away from his or her own writing schedule to read your book. If you want to return the favor and read their book and THEN offer an opinion, great. But just leaving a rating without reading the book is the most insulting thing you can do. But guess who it insults?? YOU!!! You’re a horrible, unethical author, and I can’t respect anyone who do this kind of nonsense.

I’m not stupid. I know how many of my books have sold. I know who has received free copies for review. I will know if you have read it or not. If you have read it, by all means, go ahead and tell me what you hated about it, but don’t expect any good to come to you or your writing career if you leave a juvenile rating to “get back at me” for not liking your book.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my pet peeve in the writing/reading world!!