Vinnie Hansen's Blog - Posts Tagged "how-i-review"
Easy Reviewer?
Scanning my reviews and noting the lack of one and two-star ratings, a person might conclude I'm an easy touch. That would no doubt shock my former English students.
But it's true that I give 3-5 ratings, or in the school world, C's, B's and A's. Why don't I fail books?
When I was a teacher, it was my job to read all papers, even the most paltry and pathetic. I also used to be compulsive about finishing books. But now I'm retired and life is short. If a book doesn't capture my interest, I abandon it, which means I don't read D or F books. A book may not fulfill the promise of its hook, but that doesn't negate that it had something going for it. It got me to read it. So how could I give it a bad mark?
This soft spot results partly from being a writer myself. I appreciate how hard it is to produce a full-length manuscript. It requires a greater time commitment and effort than any assignment I ever meted out to my students. So even if a book collapses at the end, giving it a failing mark is like saying a marathon runner failed because he stumbled across the finish line in last place.
Finally, I try to evaluate a book based on what it attempts. If we watch a romantic comedy, we don't expect it to be Citizen Kane. We expect a boy and girl to meet, seem insurmountably mismatched, but after some entertaining and perhaps amusing incidents, to end up together. Similarly, I don't approach a cozy mystery expecting it to soar into the literary heights and gravitas of Snow Falling on Cedars.
Like a romcom, the cozy has fairly specific parameters. When it succeeds within those parameters, it deserves 5 stars. After all, if I assigned students to write a limerick, I wouldn't dock their grades because their poem didn't have the qualities of a sonnet!
So there you have it--the reasons I'm a big softy.
But it's true that I give 3-5 ratings, or in the school world, C's, B's and A's. Why don't I fail books?
When I was a teacher, it was my job to read all papers, even the most paltry and pathetic. I also used to be compulsive about finishing books. But now I'm retired and life is short. If a book doesn't capture my interest, I abandon it, which means I don't read D or F books. A book may not fulfill the promise of its hook, but that doesn't negate that it had something going for it. It got me to read it. So how could I give it a bad mark?
This soft spot results partly from being a writer myself. I appreciate how hard it is to produce a full-length manuscript. It requires a greater time commitment and effort than any assignment I ever meted out to my students. So even if a book collapses at the end, giving it a failing mark is like saying a marathon runner failed because he stumbled across the finish line in last place.
Finally, I try to evaluate a book based on what it attempts. If we watch a romantic comedy, we don't expect it to be Citizen Kane. We expect a boy and girl to meet, seem insurmountably mismatched, but after some entertaining and perhaps amusing incidents, to end up together. Similarly, I don't approach a cozy mystery expecting it to soar into the literary heights and gravitas of Snow Falling on Cedars.
Like a romcom, the cozy has fairly specific parameters. When it succeeds within those parameters, it deserves 5 stars. After all, if I assigned students to write a limerick, I wouldn't dock their grades because their poem didn't have the qualities of a sonnet!
So there you have it--the reasons I'm a big softy.
