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

[zhyegoatt]

I always try new authors or series through my library first because even paperback books cost too much nowadays to just throw away money on bad books. I do however, find a lot of my books through Amazon and their recommendations. On Amazon I mostly read the one and two star reviews to see what problems people had with the book because the five star reviews are usually by people that will read anything the author writes no matter how bad it is. Personally I don't consider many books worthy of five stars so why would I trust reviewers who pass out five stars on name recognition or genre alone?

Secondly, I find books through all the groups I belong to on here, Myspace, and Yahoo. If the book or author is mentioned by more than one person I check into it through Amazon and sometimes on the author's site since most authors now have excerpts available.

Mostly it's professional reviews I read AFTER I've finished a book because I'm still looking for a pro with my tastes. They get paid and get books for free so I don't think I would ever go out and buy a book solely based on their reviews.

I really don't mind spoilers as long as they're not like the one I heard before I went to see "The Sixth Sense". Two days before I went to see it some dumbass online was all "He's dead!" Ok, if you haven't seen that movie by now it's your own fault. Giving the ending away is really the only type of spoiler I hate.