Prompt Response: Week Five

I don't often rely on reviews for my personal reading, as I would rather make up my own mind through my personal reading experience. However, there are certainly exceptions! If a book hasn't intrigued me, yet I am hearing lots of chatter about it in the library, from my friends, on social media, etc., than I will turn to reviews to see if I can be pulled in after all. Also, if I am reading a book and find that it is losing me, surprising me, or I absolutely love it, I will sometimes look to a handful of reviews to see if others agree with me. Like Erin, when I am reading a review, anything that is too long will instantly turn me off to reading through it! Additionally, I am only interested in reading reviews from sources who will also publish negative reviews. I don’t focus on the negative, but overly positive, fluff reviews fail to provide an accurate description of the title, and to help to determine it’s value to me as an individual reader, as well as to me as someone who recommends books to others. When seeking out reviews, I tend to look to GoodReads, Library Thing, and the New York Times Sunday Book Review. However, I am excited to have so many additional sources to utilize from the resources provided in this class!

In reading the reviews of the e-book, I wasn't particularly encouraged to add it to a collection, or to read it myself. The Amazon review was particularly off-putting; I have never been interested in Amazon's Book Reviews because there is no credibility and often times I find that the reviews speak to why the book was good or bad for the individual writing the review, rather than objective description of the appeal or lack there of, of the book. Although the two blog reviews were more useful, neither was perfect. The first blog review was very plot-heavy in describing the book, and yet gave no appeal terms or descriptors to explain why or why not this would be a good book to have in a collection and/or to recommend to a reader. The second blog review was much more thorough in describing the appeal elements, but failed to describe any of the plot or include any snippets from the book. My overall opinion is that this book fails to live up to the Romantic Suspense genre (Where was any description of the frame, pacing or any other characteristics of Romantic Suspense?) and would not likely be one that I would purchase for a collection; I would need more information about the description of the plot and the elements of appeal, and unfortunately, given the decided lack of reliable reviews for e-book only materials, this would not likely be easily accessed.

The caliber of reviews for “Angela’s Ashes” was far higher, and included appropriate and balanced amounts of information about the plot and the appeal of the title. Based upon these well-written and thoughtful reviews, which objectively described the book, I would without question add it to a collection.

The fact that it was so easy to decide that the e-book wasn’t worth purchasing, based upon incomplete reviews, and that “Angela’s Ashes” was such a clear purchase, based upon the breadth of complete reviews, is a disappointing reflection on the process and culture of book reviews. This process is particularly disappointing for e-books, which may be deserving of better reviews than they receive; the result of the lack of reviews for e-book only titles such as this, is that they are judged based on the review rather than their content, and thus not purchased for a collection. The victim is thus the reader, who very well might love and benefit from this or other e-book titles being available. This proves that there should be a more balanced amount of attention paid to reviews for any and all genres as well as perceived level of literary relevance.