Community Discussion: On Reviews

[musesong]

Here is another of the occasional community discussion posts. We were wondering how community members felt about print and on-line book reviews? These could be the professional ones generated by writers who are paid to review books or those reviews and ratings put up by readers on book selling sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, on review blogs

Comments

[johnsnotes]

I have RSS feeds to various review pages of UK and US national papers and magazines( The Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle,The Daily Telegraph, Washington Post, London Review of Books, New York Review of books,) I also belong to various bookswap sites such as Bookmooch, and ReaditSwapit that have book reviews in their Forums and RSS feed them. Finally I also have RSS feeds to 50 book challenge and email alerts from Goodreads.

So daily scan for any reviews of books mostly to alert me to books that I have missed that I would like. If its a fan review I quickly get a sense if I would like the book sometimes from why they didn't like it!! Once a book has caught my attention I will go on to Amazon, Librarything and Goodreads to see what the community consensus is. Scanning the reviews soon gives you an idea of how well the book matches the ambition and skills of the writer.

A lot of the fan reviews and I must say too many of the reviews on this site are all too often the book page blurb and a paragraph on why I like/don't like it. Even worse are the reviews that are a list of 10 titles and one liners. Too many of the professional reviews are on the other side of the camp in that they show how much they know about the subject or theme of the book and you struggle to know what the actual book is about.

So the ideal review for me puts the book in to context...what genre, what traditions are they writing on, what's interesting about the author and this book. Secondly, I like to see a outline about the plot, characters, factual content etc so I can get a sense of what the author is trying to do. Thirdly, in the light of the first two factors, a review of how the author has managed to make it work in terms of characterisations, styles, plot credibility etc

I supposed its akin to a good review say of a play by Shakespeare. I like to know what the Director's interpretation is and how this links to previous versions of that play as well as what this means for choice of set, costume, period, casting, lighting, staging etc. And then how successful this was and why. Here as in the book review I want to read a critical analysis that illuminates why the play/book works/doesnt work. As suggested I also love the notion of aggregating the reposes of reviewers, I don't think we have a booksite that is akin to the rottentomatoes site that collates all the reviews and gives you the reader a community consensus. I know that individual sites like Goodreads and Library thing.com aggregate the ratings. As do the Amazon sites with the possibility of manipulation as raised but we don't have a poll of the polls.

And what do you do with all these reviews you may ask? I wishlist all the books that catch my eye on to my book swap sites and then wait until they pop up free. Well that's the theory, in practise I also buy some as well...oh and read some of course!

[amanda_1951]

I read reviews on occasion, but I'm more likely to read a book if someone who knows my reading style recommends one to me. Otherwise, I usually read the book jacket if something about the book catches my eye. I do most of my trolling for books in stores rather than online, so I'm usually reading what the publisher says about the book, rather than the sales department.