When you write a negative review...

[Leticia]

It already happened to me to recommend a book to someone just to see a video of that same person ranting about the same book for like half an hour. I thought then "Cool off, I could not guess you would hate it so much.." But I have been wary of recommending books since then.

I am very subjective when it comes to rating and liking books. It does not matter to me if it's literary garbage or it it will not be remembered in ten years, if I enjoyed reading it enough I give it four to five stars.

On the other hand it is also often this way that 'classics' that everybody talks highly about, but that were over boring can get one stars. I will not refrain from giving a bad review because the author is loved by reviewers. My book reviews have nothing to do with me admiring an author political views or not.

In any case, it's tiring to be frowned upon when you rated a fluffy book four stars because that made you smile after a long day and also tiring when people expect you to like this or that. People are unpredictable and yeah, so are tastes. And as a reader I need equal doses of serious and fluffy, it would be too tiring to read the number of books I read otherwise.

And in a last one I often rate highly other books that people considered too long winded.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

I very rarely do book recommendations.

For one, I need to know a person fairly well to have an idea of what they might like or not like before I'd rec them a book.

For another, if someone I liked hated a book I love, then I'd seriously start questioning their taste. ;)

[Becky]

CBRetriever wrote: "Becky wrote: "CB, you negatively review a book because of deckled edges? Or do you mean something else?"

Digital books that are left justified only. I have a hard time telling when paragraphs end ..."

Ahhh ok that makes a lot more sense!

[Leticia]

colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "
For another, if someone I liked hated a book I love, then I'd seriously start questioning their taste. ;)"

I usually wait for the amount of books disliked to grow quite high than yeah, it may be that the tastes are way too different. I anyway am learning to take Booktube recommendations with a grain of salt

[Cheryl]

Gabi wrote: "Just yesterday I had the case that I was pissed off by a book everybody else I'm connecting to here on GR loves. So I just left it by short 2 sentences, cause why should I rain on something others love? ..."

Because we all deserve better? If nobody spoke to the flaws of the bestsellers, we'd be overrun with derivative disposables. I don't generally rant, but I do definitely explain 1. what's wrong with bad books, and 2. what I don't like about books that might be good but aren't for me.

[Cheryl]

colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "Random aside -

when I see this thread I start thinking of the music for "when you wish upon a star". That's how I read this thread name..."

Oh nice. That's a tune I won't mind sticking in my head.

edit: I'm sincere, even though the comment above looks sarcastic.

[Beth]

Less than two months behind on these, though not by much...

1. What if you want to give a negative review but also want to encourage the author (because- say- they are your Goodreads friend)?

I have very few GR friends who are also authors, thankfully. A lukewarm-or-worse reaction would spill through into my review, I suspect, regardless of how much I might try to conceal it. So... hmm. I'd probably just avoid writing one altogether.

2. Do you leave really long reviews for the books you hate, or really short ones.

If I really hate it, I'll likely not finish it. At best I'll put it on the dnf shelf, write a couple of sentences as to why it was put there, and move on.

3. Do you ever feel like you missed something when everyone else gives a book 4 or 5 stars and you just have no interest in it?

I sometimes feel this way when I read a friend's review where they have a warm connection with a book that left me with the exact opposite response. For ones I haven't read, if they write a great review of a book I didn't care to pursue after seeing the blurb, pro reviews, etc., it can turn the tide a little bit in its favor.

4. Do you ever have the urge to bash a book only because it's popular? (I get that urge sometimes, usually I resist, but I feel it)

No. I don't think I've ever hated on something just because it was popular. Dutifully ignored until the herd moved on to something else, sure, and that happens fast these days... but even if I ended up hating it, there will be plenty of people out there hating it in more entertaining ways than I could ever come up with.

5. have you ever written a negative review and then immediately felt bad about it and gone back and changed it? And- as related question- have you ever given a book a break (and an extra star) because you feel bad for the author?

When it comes to authors with a smaller following, sympathy will come into play a little bit, especially if the reviews on the book's first GR page seem unlikely to help them out, whether by their presence or their absence. But I've never dunked on a book so hard that I felt I had to backtrack for the author's sake.

[Bruce]

For negative reviews, I usually only give them to big name atrocious authors like James Patterson, whom a negative review won’t affect either way, or other big name books that don’t deserve the reputation they have.

[CBRetriever]

Bruce wrote: "For negative reviews, I usually only give them to big name atrocious authors like James Patterson, whom a negative review won’t affect either way, or other big name books that don’t deserve the rep..."

On Amazon, since reviews are not just book reviews (they also product reviews), most of my reviews for books that are negative have to do with formatting problems, excessive typos, charts/graphs that are unreadable and other problems with the book itself. I consider this a service to other customers.

[Beth]

Kaa wrote: "Personally, I find reading negative reviews to be more helpful in deciding to read a book, so I think I do tend to spend longer/more space on those. I think my most liked reviews may also be negative, and when I get random likes on old reviews from people I don't know, it does tend to be on negative reviews."

I agree that reading negative reviews is more helpful. When trying to decide whether to pursue a popular book, I will almost exclusively filter by 2- and 3-star reviews. They're more honest and substantial than 5-star reviews that have nothing to say except that the reader loved everything about it. Yawn. This can lead to a "reverse recommendation" where what the reviewer thinks is a flaw, makes it more interesting to me. One of my GR friends is not a fan of purple prose, but I enjoy it... :D

[Cheryl]

reverse recommendation... that definitely happens!

[Bruce]

CBRetriever, that’s a good thing to do on Amazon. I wish more people would do it on Amazon. That actually can make or break whether I’ll buy a book or dvd sometimes. I don’t do well with micro print, except in comic books/graphic novels, although a lot of the books with way too small print are out print paper backs and some hardcovers from the 50’s-70’s, I find. I need larger print, or decent sized print in regular books.

[Bruce]

Beth, you have no idea how many times I’ve been reverse recommended or reversed turned away from checking out that way.

[carol.]

I tried copying reviews to Amazon, but their standards were too annoying. I think I had a couple rejected (I have no idea why), and it's just not worth my time. I only have done it for very new authors who I feel deserve a little signal boost.

[MadProfessah]

I tend not to write reviews because I try to read books I’m fairly confident I am going to enjoy! I’m to busy to “waste” time reading books that suck. Sometimes I try stuff because lots of other people had liked it and it turns out it was just not for me.

[Eric_W]

I started writing reviews because it was annoying how much I was forgetting about a particular book after several years. So about 40 years ago I began compiling notes on books as I was reading them (I read a lot of non-fiction.) That resulted in lots of notebooks. Thank goodness for computers. I began using those notes to write comments and reviews for the library newsletter and because of my irreverent style perhaps, became popular. That lasted around 20 years when I discovered Goodreads where my "reviews" reside since 2008. I only very, very, rarely review or take notes on a book I dislike or don't find interesting. I don't read books I dislike. My goal is to help myself and if others find my comments interesting, that's fine. I do want to encourage people to read books I think are especially good or important. But the main reason is to help me remember salient points of content in non-fiction and series/authors I have enjoyed in fiction. I don't write comments or reviews to help or hinder an author.

[Tomas]

1. What if you want to give a negative review but also want to encourage the author (because- say- they are your Goodreads friend)?
In that case, I'd probably go with a review as constructive as possible but not give a star rating.

2. Do you leave really long reviews for the books you hate, or really short ones.
Judging by my single experience, a long one - the main reason would be to show why the book did not click with me.

3. Do you ever feel like you missed something when everyone else gives a book 4 or 5 stars and you just have no interest in it?
I'd definitely think about it even before I'd get to the review stage - and probably find a reason why the book was a miss for me. One reason I can imagine is that the book would be a mix (not clearly one genre or subgenre) and the aspect that'd be pointed out the most would not be what I saw as the dominant part of the story, and thus being a major taste mismatch.

4. Do you ever have the urge to bash a book only because it's popular? (I get that urge sometimes, usually I resist, but I feel it)
To be honest, I've had poor hype management with popular books and thus I avoid them a lot. After all, it's more fun to find good stuff in the massive amount of self-published -ebooks - which are not massively overpriced, as trad-published e-books are. Thinking about this, I might bash the practice of price-matching that's one of the most abhorrent marketing tactic used by traditional publishers.

5. have you ever written a negative review and then immediately felt bad about it and gone back and changed it? And- as related question- have you ever given a book a break (and an extra star) because you feel bad for the author?
I haven't got there yet. But my answer to #1 would likely be something I'd consider

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

1. What if you want to give a negative review but also want to encourage the author (because- say- they are your Goodreads friend)?

I try not to take into account if an author is my Goodreads friend or not. I think most authors don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive. What probably frustrates authors is a) overly emotional reactions to plot developments or b) readers who just don't "get it."

2. Do you leave really long reviews for the books you hate, or really short ones.

Much more likely to leave a long review of books I hated or at least liked less than other readers - to be honest, it feels a little bit like I'm justifying my opinion.

3. Do you ever feel like you missed something when everyone else gives a book 4 or 5 stars and you just have no interest in it?

Maybe it's egotistical of me, but I usually think everyone else is wrong. Sorry. :-(
(I should note that there are plenty of times where I realize I am not the target audience for a particular book, such as romance books or YA books. It won't change my rating though.)

4. Do you ever have the urge to bash a book only because it's popular? (I get that urge sometimes, usually I resist, but I feel it)

No, in fact I'm usually sad that I didn't like the book as much as I had hoped to. But those tend to be my longer reviews, where I explain myself more thoroughly.

5. have you ever written a negative review and then immediately felt bad about it and gone back and changed it? And- as related question- have you ever given a book a break (and an extra star) because you feel bad for the author?

Actually, I usually think that I've been too generous with books and I often find myself lowering my initial rating by one star.

For me, my ratings and reviews are all about my own opinion so I try to be as honest as possible, even if that means I give a popular book a so-so rating/review, or if I like a book that that others don't appreciate. I don't rate books according to what their supposed literary merit is, I rate them solely based on how much I enjoyed them.

[Adrian]

I tend only to write reviews for books I either loved or hated - so 4, 5 or 1 stars. I'm also pretty grudging with 5s as I expect something truly special for that - some people hand them out far too readily IMHO.

It's a different kind of pleasure writing a 1 star review but it is pleasure. I absolutely blasted Inferno - grinning all the while and (as others have suggested above) I've had quite a few random likes of that review by strangers.

The only time I upgraded a review was because the book was written by a GR friend who asked me to read it. In all honesty, the book was pretty lousy and needed a bit of work. In my review I did focus on the bad and the good (what there was of that) but just couldn't give it less than 4 for personal political reasons. (Others had given it 5!!!) I should've given it 2.

I still struggle with my conscience over that because I normally pride myself on my ruthless consistency. The chap who wrote it was happy though and is still my friend.

[John]

Adrian wrote: "I still struggle with my conscience over that because I normally pride myself on my ruthless consistency. The chap who wrote it was happy though and is still my friend."

I just love my fellow book people. Only we can have a crisis of conscience over our opinions about a book.

See, what you do in the situation you outlined is you go ahead and give it 4 stars, but the first line of your review is "So and so is a friend of mine, so I can't be completely objective about this book..." which is the equivalent of a hostage making big eyes to tell the viewer that he can't speak freely because his tormentor is just off screen. It says "please don't take my star rating seriously, but do understand that everything I said that's negative is at least as bad as you think I'm saying it is, and probably worse."

Seriously though, I totally get it. I think a lot of us become torn between our critical rigor, our intellectual honesty, and our social ties. Even, sometimes, when those social ties are nothing more than "I've interacted with this person on Goodreads or Facebook and he/she seems like a good/kind/smart/interesting/cool person."

I guess where I personally come down is that we should tell our truth, but with the humility to realize it's just our opinion, and with the compassion to realize that there's another person on the other end, to temper how we tell our truth. There's a big difference between, at one extreme, "this is a big steaming pile of garbage" and "here are the specific things that didn't work for me," followed by a long list. You can't control how someone else is going to take your criticism, but you have as much control over how you offer it as you're willing to put in time to consider it.

[Becky]

RJ from the LBC wrote: "5. have you ever written a negative review and then immediately felt bad about it and gone back and changed it? And- as related question- have you ever given a book a break (and an extra star) because you feel bad for the author?

Actually, I usually think that I've been too generous with books and I often find myself lowering my initial rating by one star."

SAME! I have many times gone back and lowered stars for books that failed to live up to the post-ending glow long term.

[Becky]

John wrote: "See, what you do in the situation you outlined is you go ahead and give it 4 stars, but the first line of your review is "So and so is a friend of mine, so I can't be completely objective about this book..." which is the equivalent of a hostage making big eyes to tell the viewer that he can't speak freely because his tormentor is just off screen. It says "please don't take my star rating seriously, but do understand that everything I said that's negative is at least as bad as you think I'm saying it is, and probably worse.""

LOL Awesome.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Becky wrote: "SAME! I have many times gone back and lowered stars for books that failed to live up to the post-ending glow long term."

Becky always keeps it real! :-)

I would rather read an honest review any day, whether I agree with it or not, than an meaningless jumble of empty words that reflects what the reviewer thinks other people want to hear.

True story: in one of my other GR groups there's a know-it-all blowhard guy who will only rate books 5 stars because he feels like even if he doesn't like a book at least the author wrote the book they set out to write so they deserve full credit. I had to block this individual after he started following me around and commenting on my reviews that I didn't give the same rating that other people gave. (Insert eye-rolling emoji here)

[Becky]

RJ from the LBC wrote: "True story: in one of my other GR groups there's a know-it-all blowhard guy who will only rate books 5 stars because he feels like even if he doesn't like a book at least the author wrote the book they set out to write so they deserve full credit. I had to block this individual after he started following me around and commenting on my reviews that I didn't give the same rating that other people gave. (Insert eye-rolling emoji here)"

RJ - I just don't get that kind of person. I wonder if they are like that in other aspects of life.

"Well, the carpenter made the infant crib he wanted to make. Who am I to complain that it's completely uneven and my baby rolls up against the splintery slats at night because the maker didn't level or sand or finish it? He made it. He's the expert!"

"I won't complain about this soup that I ordered which has a fly in it, because how do I know that that wasn't the chef's decision to intentionally add extra protein??"

[Adrian]

John wrote: "I just love my fellow book people. Only we can have a crisis of conscience over our opinions about a book."

I'm glad GR doesn't have a like function (beyond reviews) but if it did I would have liked that.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Becky wrote: "RJ - I just don't get that kind of person. I wonder if they are like that in other aspects of life...."

Honestly, I always wonder if they are ashamed of their own opinion, or concerned about not conforming to expectations, or seriously afraid that they aren't smart enough to have fully understood what they were reading.

I just think reading is a personal thing, and how one individual connects with a book has to do a lot with their background, their attitude, their likes and dislikes; no two people will have exactly the same experience reading a book. Heck, when I re-read books I often have a slightly different experience each time. How could we ALL be expected to have the exact same experience with any book?