Book Blog Spotlight – Butterfly-o-meter

LEO:  Butterfly-o-Meter Books was born out of my love for books, both reading and writing them…ok, maybe it also had something to do with me having basically nobody around to fangirl over books with either, believe it or not. Fangirling over books was certainly due, so I braved the online world and started a book blog. Twice. Don’t ask, long story.

New readers can expect the unexpected, I guess? I’m not necessarily a niche reader, and my reviews take readers all over the place, romance, sci-fi, thriller, suspense, horror/dark fantasy, all sorts of fantasy and paranormal, smut of all heat levels – you name it, I probably read and review it. With a few notable exceptions, of course, we all have our do-s and don’t-s. One thing my readers, new and older alike, can expect is to find me on my blog, my honest thoughts, my opinions, my feelings – considerate, but honest.

LEO: The memes I do most often are Parajunkee & Alison’s Feature & Follow and The Story Siren’s In My Mailbox, on occasion I also doAlexis’s Why I love…Wednesdays and GReads’s TGIF. I have an issue with remembering what day of the week it is – don’t laugh! It’s part of my personal charm -, so I sometimes sort of skip one or another. But my heart is there every week, scout’s honor!

As far as challenges go, I signed up for The Story Vixen’sOutdo Yourself, The 2012 TBR Pile, Book Chick City’s100+ Books in A Year, and of course my very own My Bookish 2012 New Year’sResolutions.

Except for my own challenge, I do them all because: a – the hosts are bloggers I highly respect and find inspiring, b – the memes & challenges are great means to interact with other book bloggers and I’m all about the mingling, and c – they help me achieve high goals (and remember what day of the week it is…iFail, lol.)

LEO:  Why yes, I’m a fan of romance! I’m also a fan of steamy reads, and as far as I’m concerned the only limit to how steamy they can get is just how daring their author was.

I’m a very open minded person, and I’m unashamed of being a mature, sensual woman. Unless everyone else has taken vows of chastity (hurrah if they did, I’m totally cheering them on!), we all have more or less steam in our own lives. What’s wrong with being creative in rendering that beautiful part of who we are as human beings as well? In my opinion sexuality is not something to scoff at or hide under the carpet or under the blanket or whatever, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s a deeply primal part of who we are, I say celebrate it as much as you do whatever else, you know?

By content, what you might call ‘porn’ is an intense zoom into what you might call ‘erotica’. I don’t like beating around the bush (no pun intended, lol!), if I’m going to be reading one on one action, it better be intense or I’m getting bored. Intensity is not related to the fleshy details of the interaction, it’s about who the characters are in their inner most selves. Are they raging infernos, consuming and smoldering and utterly intoxicating?

It’s that intensity I’ll love, not the fleshy, more or less graphical details (though those will be fun, I won’t deny it). I don’t read erotica for the graphical aspects of it, I read erotica for the same reason I read everything else: a search for intense, haunting, memorable characters. If the steamy goes well with that, then steamy it is. I decide if I want to read a title based on how strong the characters hint to be, not on the amount of fleshy affairs it will or won’t have.

LEO:  I’ll say definite YA must-reads are Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake and Saving June by Hannah Harrington, but start with the Twilight Saga for instance, like I did. It’s light, it’s accessible, it’s a good blend of angst, romantic elements and action. Or maybe start with Paranormalcy by Kiersten White. Build your way up from there. I haven’t yet gotten to the Hunger Games stage, for instance, maybe I’m too new to YA myself. And whatever you do, don’t take my advice. I’m the one with eccentric tastes often, lol.

LEO: Not every post gets reactions, not every Facebook, Twitter, etc post gets a reaction. I’d like them to, but it’s unrealistic to ever expect half of it. If they did, I wouldn’t be able to engage in conversations unless I’d sprout a few dozen more hands – wouldn’t that be a sight?

When any of them do, however, I’m right there replying and chatting on. I pretty much reply to all comments on my blog, for instance. It’s very important to me, because my blogging is about interaction, I’m all about the mingling, as I’ve said before. I’d like to think I’m talking to the world and with it through my blog, not at it.

At the same time, the fact that my blog isn’t followed by 1000+ readers gives me the chance to be able to actually interact with pretty much all my commenters; if any given post would have like 20+ comments, and I post daily by large, how could I ever keep up with it and interact with my readers as well? Ah, the irony of popularity and the disguised blessing of not suffering from it!

LEO: Oh yes, there’s a huge difference. My literature professor used to say the only literary critics worth listening to are the ones that are accomplished authors themselves – but I think that would make them authors first, and critics after, right? Maybe after I’ll become an accomplished author, I’ll be a critic too. In all fairness, what I can talk about is my experience of reading the book, my read of it. The book is not good or bad per se, it’s just a good match for me or it isn’t, for numerous reasons, the genre, the writing style, the target audience it was meant for, the type and construction of characters, and sooo on and so forth. A book is not a block of stone, it’s an elaborate structure, a building. It’s ridiculous for me to say the building isn’t good because I don’t like it personally, isn’t it? Why should books be any different? Of course, what I’m talking about here is a finished product. That means an edited, proofed manuscript, carefully combed over, that went through hands of people who know what they’re doing, regardless of how it will be published in the end. All aspects of it should have been carefully addressed, including the cover I will add – it’s a product, and the wrapping of it does make a world of difference in whether or not one might like to try it. If one or more of the building blocks of a book have been ignored, it’s not a finished product. If the building has a sunken foundation, I can say the builder was sloppy; if it crumbles under my eyes, I might go as far as saying it wasn’t good at all.

How would your grades of quality be objective, anyway? Are you not emotionally involved when reading a book? Are you not basing your reactions to characters on what you subjectively favor or dislike? Are you not holding the plot up to your subjective desires and expectations, culture, beliefs, passed experiences? You tell me then, how could you possibly be objective at the end of such a subjective process? Objectivity is like truth, love, and justice – it’s an ideal concept, a mental construct, more like something to be aimed at then an actual outcome. In order to be objective, you should have no emotional, personal implication in the decision process. If you can do that, I’m going to wonder just how much of a flesh and bone creature you really are.

And you know what? I don’t want to go for that whole objective assessment anyway. I can go for it, I’ve done enough of that during my studies, written academic papers, objective, scientific, impersonal. I don’t want to do that to books. I take my pleasures personally, and reading is one of them. If people come to my blog, I’m guessing they’re interested in my subjective response to a book.

LEO: I suck at picking. I’m notorious for going with the “All of the above” option, lol. This is probably going to sound very old school to you guys, but I love authors like Oscar Wilde, Dostoyevsky, Balzac, Zola, Poe, and a bunch of Romanian authors you probably never even heard of like Mircea Eliade, I.L. Caragiale etc. Those are my old favorites. I enjoy reading all kinds of writing, and I don’t go into a read with preconceived ideas or stereotypes as standards, I say each book must be carefully discovered and known, just like you would a person. It should be your desire to know the deepest part of the one before you, not search for meager little bits to compare with someone else’s.

Flavors of the month, or more like long-time flavors in the making really, are authors that appeal to me at any given moment. It doesn’t have to be with the whole book, it’s enough that one chapter, one part, even one line would make the strings of my soul vibrate, and just like that my list of favorites has just gotten longer. Lifelong favorites or not, I can’t say, I hope I’ll have a very, very, very long list of those by the time I’ll check out though.

LEO: This is my Oscar moment, I’m going to make the most of it!

I’d like to say a big, big, heartfelt thank you to  Alexis @ Reflections of a Bookaholic  for being my awesome blogging friend from the very start. She has inspired me to become a better blogger, to invest myself more in the process. And though the above mentioned bloggers are all inspirational to me, and I respect them and their blogs, Alexis has inspired not from afar, but through direct, personal contact. She was there, and still is. So Alexis, I <3 you!