Michael’s Comments (group member since Nov 18, 2010)

Michael’s comments from the The Extra Cool Group! (of people Michael is experimenting on) group.

Authors have--or should have--thick skin. If you're a chef and you make a shitty dish, you should WANT to know so the next one won't be as bad.

But, in every argument between an author and a reviewer I've come across, I've sided with the reviewer. If you don't want to hear that your book is a lame rip-off of Twilight, then don't write a lame rip-off of Twilight.

There are a few books that I have reviewed in both locations,

Here's a few livejournal posts I wrote when reading the Chronicles of Narnia

This is awesome and helpful and awesomely helpful. Thanks a bunch!

As I said before, I just copy/paste my GR reviews

Ah, the "basically" threw me. Do the reviews over there have threads like goodreads? What have you noticed that is different about the forums over there from the groups over here?

but then i'd have to go to arizona, yikes. that state scares me.

Sorry, this beer must be picked up in person. There are strict rules about this, you know...if I don't see a driver's license, or an NRA membership card for Arizona natives, since they don't have diver's licenses, I cannot disperse the beer. It's, uh, corporate policy.

Yeah, I think your second question especially is interesting, and it is a different angle from the other thread.

I have made most of my friends through stumbling across their reviews as I was browsing books I was thinking about reading. And, I've made quite a few friends from participating in the same discussion threads. I think the way GR-member reviews are so prominent on the pages for each book emphasizes the social dynamic of the site, as opposed to some other sites I've been to where professional reviews are also available. The emphasis on professional reviews seems to place a higher value on the book as a commercial object, as opposed to a social discussion object. I'm making up terms now, but I hope that makes sense.

I'm a bit reluctant as well, and could see that being a huge conflict of interest. Although I've now done it.

Fortunately, I liked Caris's book a lot, so I didn't have any difficulty reviewing it honestly. And, I did explain my negative criticism more than I might've if I hadn't known the author.

Even so, I will understand if nobody ever quite trusts my 4-star rating of Caris's novella. If I were someone else, I sure as hell wouldn't trust it.

For any of you that write reviews elsewhere, including Aerin, Ryan, Jimmy and everybody else: would it be alright if I read some of the reviews you've written in other contexts? If you wouldn't mind, could you send me links? Being able to do that kind of comparison would be very helpful.

Welcome! It doesn't matter who I am. Just know that I'm watching and lurking.

There's some info about it on the main page for the group, and I'll answer any questions anyone has about what I'm doing, too. . . I'm not trying to be secretive, but I also don't want to bore people with a bunch of rhetoric talk.

I don't think I modulate my niceness that much, but I think I'm pretty good about not neglecting the good aspects of even the one and two-star books.

Okay, thinking back on some of my reviews, I might be deluding myself. I've been damned mean to Steinbeck and Marilyn Manson. A lot of it, for me, is how spontaneous the review writing process is. Since I don't revise (on any but a few occasions), being in a bad mood for the twenty minutes I'm writing can lead to a very harsh review if I wasn't impressed. That's something I try to rein in as I write, with varying degrees of success.

Thanks, Mike! It's quite possible that the comma key on his typewriter has just been broken since he finished The Orchard Keeper (I think he still used punctuation in that one). He seems like the kind of curmudgeon to still use a typewriter. And it would explain why it takes him so damn long to finish books.

There I go, getting us off topic again.

I've increasingly tried to give my shelves names that attract attention and aren't boring. I've also added shelves that are specifically "vote whoring," or "user aimed," depending on how you look at them: shelves for reviews that lots of people like, shelves for reviews that haven't gotten any votes but I like, and a shelf for my worst reviews. There's no literary merit for these shelves: they're purely for people browsing my reviews.

But, because it's important to me, I also classify books by the time period they were written. I tend to look at literature more by how it has evolved than by where it was written, although I see value in both.

I wonder if some of those who were opposed to the idea of a Disagree button wouldn’t also have voted against the Like button—too much drive-by Me-tooism and not enough substantive comment.

I sure would've. Look at how conflicted our motives become once the like button becomes a factor in this whole mess! (But don't stop voting for my reviews! I love the like button, I really do!)

I see what you mean about there being no fundamental difference between what a "like" button or "disagree" button adds to the conversation. I think the meaning is a bit different: I disagree with a lot of reviews I like, so I might click both for some reviews. That said, depending on how you use the site, "agree" and "disagree" could be just as valuable as "like." And, I think "disagree" is useful. I don't think "dislike" would be helpful, though.

That's interesting, Jimmy, because I've also reviewed almost NONE of the poetry I've read, and I've read quite a bit. I never know what to say about poetry. Except for that one Ferlinghetti book, which totally sucked. That was easy.

Is there really such thing as an unbiased, objective review though.

Discuss.

No. Even in deciding which plotlines, details, etc., to emphasize or omit, your reading of the book is coming into play. I've read book jackets that I thought didn't give an objective reading of the book because they made assumptions that I, as a reader, didn't make as I was reading.

And, on a mechanical level, some highly literate people think Cormac McCarthy is annoying with his punctuation choices. I think they add a special something to the book. So, even grammatical points can be subjective, because we all care to varying extents about any given grammatical rule.

Uhh, that's all I got. And I love it when you guys rip books to shreds, even when I liked the books. And I'll take some sex, too, please, if we're still passing that out.

Because writing is very therapeutic to me, I feel like I've had a very different experience with reviewing than you have, Choupette. Reviewing has helped me to think about and react to the books I read a lot more than I used to.

I also hope to inspire some kind of discussion and/or get mad votes, but working through my own thoughts about the book is what makes me enjoy the reviewing process. It's easier for me to think through writing, which is one of the reasons I'm a lot funnier online than IRL. But, I'm still funnier than Caris.

Leave it to the researcher to totally not answer the question, and be entirely off-topic...

I'm psycho with keeping track of things. For a long time, I had a notebook where I kept the name of every book I'd read (that I could remember; I started it when I was 12 or 13). But, at some point, I decided this was a weird, obsessive tendency, and I threw away the notebook. This was before I discovered goodreads.

The community and reflection aspects of goodreads justify my cataloguing compulsion, and make it okay that I'm obsessively trying to collect every book I've ever read in some online library. (At home, I have very few books, because I also fight a good fight against my pack-rat tendencies.)

This is an ambitious project, Micheal. Is this related to your graduate studies?

Yeah..and it's not quite as broad or ambitious as it might look from the range of things being talked about here. But, I'm letting other people run with things THEY want to talk about, too, and I'm also asking SOME questions that aren't necessarily going to come up in my current, more focused, project. But, who knows, I'm fascinated by online communities, so I might tie this in with other projects later, too.

I'm totally holding you to this, as well.

I should've said one beer instead of a six pack. . . okay, I'm a man of my word.

I know some people who make an effort to review every single book they read. What about you? Is it now a part of your reading routine to write a review, or do you only write them when the Muse strikes?

What about reviewing books you read before you joined the site? Do you review them? Do you reread them first? What do you do with them?

Do you approach writing reviews for non fiction differently from how you approach fiction? What about classic lit from modern lit? Do different types of books require different reviewing approaches? Or is it just whatev?

I live in Wickenburg AZ, which most of the time is horribly depressing

Arizona, represent! I'm from Tempe!