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Monday, December 28, 2009

Update to Review Style

I've decided to make an addition to the reviews done here at A Good Addiction. What one reviewer thinks makes a book great might make another reviewer hate it. I think just how subjective and personal reviewing actually is often gets forgotten and ignored- especially when a book receives a low star review. In truth, it breaks my heart to read a review that gave a book just 1 or 2 stars and then to go read the comments where people say oh, I don't think I will read this one now. Granted, they could have read several negative reviews to come to that decision but to base it on ONE review? Maybe you will end up feeling the same, but why just totally ignore the book because you saw a bad review? It might just be me, but if anything those kind of reviews make me want to read the book even more to see if it really is like that or if maybe it was just that person. Yes, we read reviews to get ideas of books- but why base it on a single review that a book is clearly bad?

Take Hush, Hush for example- most reviews I read loved the book, ranted and raved about it but I just didn't really like it. There were many different things that didn't meld for me. So if that was the first review someone read, should they not read the book? Of course not! These are my thoughts- my views and my reasons- but that doesn't automatically make the book bad. Yes, a series of negative reviews could mean something but the first you read? No!

Therefore, in addition to my own reviews, I am going to start finding links to other bloggers' reviews about the same book. If there are negative ones that I come across, yes I will throw those in. Keep in mind I am not going to spend hours searching just to find negative reviews but I will look for a few different ones. I want to provide a small set of reviews in addition to mine to give a better picture rather than just my 1 good, neutral or bad review. If I link you and you have a problem with it, then by all means let me know and I will delete it but I also think this is just another way to help link all of the bloggers together as well as give my readers the option to read several reviews at once for the same book rather than finding them at different times and trying to remember the features that are the same within them.

4 comments:

  1. I completely agree with you! When I see that someone wasn't a big fan of a book, but the book's summary seems interesting enough for me, I want to read it myself so I have my own opinion about it.

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  2. Awesome idea! I might have to do something like this as well...

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  3. Wow, I LOVELOVELOVE this idea. I think I might try something similar as well if you're okay with it.This is a really good way to be fair to authors while also helping out other bloggers :D

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  4. Natalie and Choco- I dont at all mind if you use the idea too. It helps other bloggers and also yeah, its more fair to the authors. I just HATE seeing people give up on a book because one person didnt like it. Not every book is for every person and I figured this was a good way to help keep the spotlight there rather than burning it out instantly.

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