Comments on: Accentuate the positive

By: Hillsy

Hillsy — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 10:26:18 +0000

There’s a caveat in all this for me…..I think if you are an amateur reviewer (a hobbiest who like to throw out into the world an opinion on what they’ve just read) – this isn’t a bad policy. That person may speak perfect sense, 100% of the time, but unfortunately is largely indistinguishable from someone who is less…..competent, shall we say.

I, for example, just can’t get on with YA books. I wouldn’t write a particualry glowing review of Harry Potter. But then I don’t get paid to learn the intricacies of things I don’t like and look past my gut reaction to a book to make an unbiased analysis. I’m unlikely to spend any time arguing for the merit behind my reasons for disliking something. I may have some subconscious ideas, but as someone said above I’m going to spend my energies looking for books I’ll enjoy.

So as you can see I disagree fundamentally with the first commentor, in that I put more faith in a professional review making a personal echo chamber out of the much larger echo chamber of the internet.

That said, I do think there’s solid value in having like minds who can direct you to gaps in your mutual experiences. Dave likes A and B, I like A so I should like B. However, if you’re seeking a reflection of your own mind back from the net, I will posit you ain’t that bothered about good or bad reviews anyway.

By: D. C. DaCosta

D. C. DaCosta — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 13:40:27 +0000

It seems to me that the purpose of a review is to a) encourage people to buy a good book, and b) warn people away from a bad book.

Truth is truth. If your book is garbage, someone needs to call you on it.

Limiting to favorable reviews only is a cop-out on the part of the publisher, who is too greedy, lazy, or incompetent to send the book back for rewrites — or to reject it completely.

By: Kevin A. Lewis

Kevin A. Lewis — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 19:30:02 +0000

I think reviews are useful for people who want to know what they’ll be spending their money on, but they don’t have a lot of effect on the public in general; you can’t walk through any bestseller list without putting your foot in a few lowest common denominator frito pies like the Duck Commander Devotional, although there’s a lot of Target shoppers who’ll swear it changed their lives. Don’t you wish you’d opted this classic while you’d had the chance?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 16:05:39 +0000

Intellectual awesome-sauce! That’s all.

By: Karen

Karen — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 03:46:21 +0000

There’s the reviewer who has to review because they are paid to do so. Most major newspaper/magazine reviewers fall into this category. They review a lot of books. A story has to stand out before they even notice it. More importantly, they also have to review a lot of books they wouldn’t read for pleasure. Books they don’t like before they even start. It seems to me these reviewers become jaded. They’ve lost the magic that brought them to books in the first place.

Then there’s the reviewer who gets to choose the books they review. Some paid reviewers fall into this category, but the bulk of them are amateurs. I’m including Amazon and Goodreads and a good many book review blogs here. (Isaac Fitgerald, the new book reviewer for BuzzFeed, sounds as if he will be one of these.) And yes, some of these reviewers are angry and vitriolic, but the bulk of them are honest assessments of a person’s reaction to the story.

Personally, I ignore the first type of reviewer altogether. They don’t add value for me.

As for the second, most readers eventually get a stable of reviewers they trust, and ignore the rest.

That said, I like to see bad reviews.

We don’t all like the same books, thus almost any book should get some bad reviews. If it doesn’t, I wonder why. Has the author paid for the reviews? Or asked their friends to review them? Why does everyone like it? My first instinct, through personal experience, is that the reviewing pool is skewed in some way, and that no ‘real’ readers have actually read the story.

Bad reviews can also be good. If the reviews are skewed heavily positive but also have a high number of extremely poor reviews with only a scattering in between it’s often a sign of controversial content rather than a bad book.

By publishing only positive reviews you’re only showing half the story.