Thoughts About Negative Reviews

I read a historical fiction novel this past week about Caroline Ingalls. Good book--the review is posted on my page. I was just reading other people's reviews for it, though. One woman gave it two stars out of five because she "didn't like the historical notes at the end."

Basically, the novel CAROLINE was based on actual historical record intermixed with the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories she'd recorded years ago. Some of the historical record and Laura's stories didn't gel.

For instance, the historical records document that Laura's younger sister, Carrie, was born in the Kansas Territory. Laura originally included her as a baby in LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS because she didn't know if there was going to be sequel and she wanted to include her sister in the story.

The reviewer rambled on for about two paragraphs about how she didn't like the historical changes in the book "because it felt like an assault on everything I knew."

I don't know how to think about this. I hate the phrase "everyone's entitled to his or her opinion." This might be one of the dumbest things people use to justify horrible, uninformed opinions. It's something they use to deny facts and logic. You're entitled to your opinion over the taste of someone's cooking. You're entitled to your opinion over whether or not you liked a book or a piece of art. However, when it comes to reviewing a book, to downgrade the review because it challenged your preconceived, factually inaccurate view of the world--you're probably a bad human being.

I try not to read reviews for my own books. I never believe the good reviews, and I spend far too much time dwelling on the bad ones. I think that's pretty typical for a lot of writers. However, I enjoy reading intelligent reviews for other people's books, and I like to write reviews for books I really enjoyed. If I don't really enjoy a book, I won't write a review for it. I will never understand the need other people feel to trash out someone else's work. I get emails from people, "I read your book. I didn't like it." Well...gee. Thanks. What's an appropriate response to that? You sat down and read something you didn't like, so you decided you needed to ruin the writer's whole week (or in my case, ruin the next six or seven months of my life)? I get that people are very opinionated. That seems to be a societal constant. I know the anonymity of the internet allows people to feel empowered; they don't have to look a fellow human being in the eyes when they deliver their uninformed opinions. I just wonder if that woman, when writing her review and delivering a damning two-star review even stopped to consider why she was writing what she was writing.

You don't like a book, fine. That's your opinion. You don't like a book because it changes your understanding of a timeline of events? Maybe the problem isn't with the book, but with you.