I’ve been posting reviews over at Amazon for years…when I feel like it. I don’t write up a review for every book I read because, well, I would rather spend the time reading. Five years ago I joined GoodReads after an embarassing incident wherein I read a forgettable procedural, got to the end and realised that I had read it before. One of the characteristics of my health condition is a tendency to forget things, so I figured I’d best start keeping track of the books I’d read. The list over on GoodReads comes in extra handy now that I have ebooks. I’ve never been one to keep old copies of books as souvenirs–they’re meant to be read after all, so I gave them away. But now I have no shelves to look at with the titles marching merrily across…unless I go to GoodReads.
In the last year GoodReads has exploded. What was once a quiet haunt for likeminded bibliophiles has now become yet another Social Media experience. All of a sudden there are tons of reviews…on the most popular, big-name books. At least a third of those reviews direct you to the blog of the person who posted them. (I never go. I don’t read blogs with a gun held to my head, and I don’t care nearly enough about what a stranger thought of A Discovery Of Witches to traipse over to her blog. Besides, I always think less of someone who diverts traffic away from a free host site in a bid to up her own numbers. If she’s that callous, chances are I won’t value what she thought of a given book.)
Suddenly this quiet thing I’ve been doing for years has become the hottest ticket it town. Why?
My friend Mandi explained it to me a couple of nights ago. She and a group of author friends have created a new book review blog aimed at presenting reviews that are known to be unpaid and unsolicited and therefore trustworthy. It seems that there are a lot of people out there creating book reviews to get their name noticed, to get free copies of books from publishers and, in some cases, to get paid. I should have known. What’s happening in book reviewing right now is much like what happened with blogs around 2006–call it the Sutter’s Mill effect.
So why is this a problem? Aren’t more reviews a good thing, especially for readers who have less money now to spend on books?
I’m a writer, and I admit it freely. I read books as a writer reads them (unfortunately) and I notice tricks and signs of craft that might escape a regular leisure reader. When I review a book, however, I write the review exactly like I write a blog post or a chapter in my books. I write for the audience. I picture a character in my head, and I tell her what I think will interest her. Sometimes the “characters” are people I know or amalgams of friends of mind.* Other times they’re inventions. But in every case, what I write is directed toward someone else.
Much of the new crop of reviewers, on the other hand, seem to be reviewing books in order to showcase themselves alongside the book. They are mooning book reviews, angling for reflected celebrity. It’s less of a service and more of a self-service.
I still value book reviews as a tool for helping me make a choice. But if the review uses a lot of writer’s group terminology (show don’t tell; marysue; too many adverbs) I can tell right away that the reviewer isn’t evaluating the book as a reader but as a competing author. Those are the reviews I tend to disregard.
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*It started as a typo but I like that phrase, especially since many of my friends are people I know exclusively via the web. Thus making them…friends of mind.
I am not a writer of fiction. But I think I would use all those terms (well, not “too many adverbs,” because I like adverbs) but a lot of insidery/shorthand stuff) in writing a review. Because it isn’t only writers who get involved with how a book works. Some of us readers find that pleasurable. So I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss someone who uses that language as necessarily being disingenuous in reviewing.
You know, you’re right. I need to think of a better way to explain it than to say “I just know when I see it”. Because I can tell pretty much when a reviewer is being thoughtful and constructive versus when they’re being argumentative and “I could do this so much better”. But it’s one of those 10000 hours things. And not every objection that uses those terms is a bad or imprecise one.
“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”
-Toni Morrison
Well said. (Especially the typo part)
I’m not convinced another review site is the answer, regardless its motivation.
Will readers recognize the authenticity – let alone find it in the loud and murky swamp of eMarketing?
I worry sometimes I fall into this trap. It’s not so much doing better, but a lot of times I’ll go pretty deep into a review or a flaw I see because it stuck out as I think on it, or the book engaged me despite me giving a poor review. Or a book won’t connect with me despite being good, and I have to explain why. Like Mike Duran is a great guy, but I just can’t seem to connect with his books despite liking parts of them. I don’t know how much of the internal writer I’ll channel sometimes doing this.
There’s a lot of other issues. Avoiding ratings inflation is one, and it’s rare for me to give books 5 stars. 5 has to amaze me or have a personal tie to me (like a certain ancient videogame guide that literally haunts my steps-If I discard it I find it staring at me in a bookshelf now and then despite it being 20+ years old), and sometimes a really good book just fails to do that for a technical reason that takes some space to say.
There’s really a lot of pitfalls in reviewing at all or holding a strong opinion when it comes to doing so. Especially as a budding author or someone who wants to be a reviewer.
One of the people I beta-read asked me what that person could do to make the book 5-star. I gave the best answer I could but I realise that in addition to all the tab a-into-slot b tips I can throw out there it takes some sort of alchemy for a book to hit 5 stars in my world.
I don’t think it’s because I’m a writer. I think it’s because I loathe rating inflation with a passion. Because I hate seeing elementary fiction works in the Christian space getting the same glory, laud, and honour as Victor Hugo. And because 5-stars should say “this is the best a book can be for me where I’m at.” Mostly, though, I want people to trust my reviews. I want them to really NOTICE a great book.
I follow a couple people on GoodReads who do a lot of NetGalley reviews. They read three books a day and give every one of them 5 stars. That’s their prerogative, of course, and I understand that a lot of them do that specifically so NetGalley will pick them for more books. But I also seldom take anything they say seriously.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
Yeah, I agree there is a personal aspect to a 5 star book, and inflation is especially bad on Goodreads since only the one star rating is actually bad. Two stars is okay, and even one star can often be explained in the review as “I just don’t like it” rather than “I loathe it.” Usually it’s the content of the review over the star count that sells a book for me.
Oh, I have to know…which video game guide is it??!?
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
“How to Master the Video Games,” a slim paperback giving strategies on such complex games as Pacman and Asteroids. I read it as a twelve-year old, and no matter what used bookstore I go I seem to come across a copy if I don’t own it. Enough times to joke about it haunting me, considering it’s 20 years old or more.