I Posted A Goodreads Review!

Because a few people are following my reviews on Goodreads, and because I'm pretty new to to the site and haven't posted any reviews, I went ahead and added one today that I posted on my blog a while back. In the future, I'll do it the other way around -- post it on Goodreads and have it feed to my blog.



But anyway, since I've started the ball rolling, I wanted to let everyone know up front that I'm going to review just the books that I really love. Not books by my friends or critique partners or pimp-pals. Not books that I really hate or am indifferent about. Just the books I buy because they sound like something I might enjoy.



Why, you ask? Several reasons.



FIRST, I personally prefer to know the reasons why I should read a book, not the reasons why I shouldn't. I want to know if it contains elements I tend to enjoy. If I start reading a good review and notice it focuses on, say, action and a tight suspense plot, I know that's probably not the book for me. If a good review says the characters are amazing, the sex is squirm-inducing and the love story made them laugh and cry, I'm pretty sure that's the book for me.



SECOND, negative reviews often focus on personal hot buttons and neglect the other aspects of a book that might be more important to readers without the same hot buttons. Take me, for example -- I'm a stickler for the finishing touches --that's where books can either shine or fall flat for me. Half-assed editing really pisses me off, no matter how original or exciting the overall storyline is. And then there's the formatting thing... (I'm particularly looking at you, publishers who are digitizing print backlists.) For me, reading poorly edited and/or formatted books is like buying a Filet o' Fish in the McDonald's drive-thru and finding the buns aren't lined up with the fish, the tartar sauce is leaking out one side and half the cheese is stuck to the box. Sure, the bun is soft and fresh, and the fish is hot and flaky, but the presentation is a disaster and it's really a mess to eat. Same with a book. The plot may be pure genius and the characters totally lovable, but if the publisher doesn't care enough to even look at the finished product, why should I?



See? Big hot button for me, obviously. But a lot of people aren't bothered by, and often don't even notice, egregious grammar, spelling, punctuation or formatting errors. They care more about the ideas in the story than the execution and would just roll their eyes at my pickiness.



THIRD, I don't want my pen name adding any undue weight to a negative review. Not that I'm such a big-name author, but you just never know and I'd rather be safe than sorry.  If I have a strong negative reaction to a book and think the author and/or publisher needs to know about it, I'll find some other way to alert them. I've been known to email publishers about books that surprise me -- either happily or unhappily. I've also posted a grand total of maybe two negative reviews on publisher websites under my real name as a public service to other prospective buyers. But I only do that in extreme cases where I feel readers are being misled by the book's description and are apt to be as angry as I am about it.



FOURTH, as the old saying goes, any publicity is good publicity. Negative reviews often pique readers' curiosity and make them buy a book they might not have otherwise, which would hardly be my objective in writing a negative review. So why bother?



FIFTH, as with all things in life, I want to accentuate the positive. I totally believe what goes around comes around, and I don't want to be sending out a bunch of negative energy.



FINALLY, and probably most importantly, I don't have any training in literary criticism, as the best reviewers do (I'm looking at you, Dr. Sarah Frantz), so I'm not always able to pinpoint exactly what it is that bothers me about a book, much less verbalize it. I can tell you my gut reaction, but that isn't necessarily helpful to an author and I think it should be. The only reason I like to read a well-written negative review of a book is to learn from it to my own writing. If I can't write an insightful, thought-provoking negative review, I need to leave that job to the pros.